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Judge orders Trump officials to offer jobs back to fired probationary workers

By Salvador Rizzo, The Washington Post

March 13, 2025, 3:30 pm CDT

SAN FRANCISCO—A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to offer jobs back to all probationary employees who were fired last month from the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs under directions by the Office of Personnel Management, a ruling that could reinstate thousands of employees who were ousted as part of the president’s push to slash the federal workforce.

Judge William Alsup said at a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco that OPM—which serves as the federal government’s human resources agency—had no legal authority to direct the mass firings in phone calls and written communications last month. He added that individual agencies could follow the steps laid out in a federal law called the Reduction in Force Act to pare back their staffs.

The ruling marked the most significant challenge so far to President Donald Trump’s effort to shrink and reshape the sprawling, 2.3-million person federal workforce. Alsup also extended a temporary restraining order he had granted last month to a group of labor unions and advocacy groups who sued over the terminations.

Alsup castigated a Justice Department attorney arguing on behalf of the Trump administration for submitting “sham” documents and “stonewalling” efforts to gather facts and testimony, incensed that the acting director of OPM, Charles Ezell, refused to testify in court Thursday as the judge had previously ordered.

“I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth,” Alsup told Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelsey Helland, the lone Justice Department lawyer at the hearing.

“You will not bring the people here to be cross-examined,” the judge said. “You’re afraid to do so, because … it would reveal the truth. This is the U.S. District Court. … I’ve been practicing or serving in this court for over 50 years, and I know how we get to the truth.”

The judge previously issued a temporary restraining order last month, finding that OPM’s directives to terminate all probationary workers at the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, as well as the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Small Business Administration and Fish and Wildlife Service were “unlawful, invalid, and must be stopped and rescinded.”

Justice Department attorneys representing the Trump administration maintained that OPM never ordered federal agencies to fire employees and was only offering guidance, despite the fact that multiple human resources officials—from the IRS and National Science Foundation and the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy and Veterans Affairs—have said OPM ordered them to dismiss their probationary workers, according to court records.

One of those officials, Traci DiMartini, was the chief human capital resources officer at the IRS until she was placed on administrative leave, shortly after Alsup issued the restraining order last month. Her statements had come up in court, and the judge cited them in a written order. DiMartini is not a probationary worker, according to court records.

“Regarding the removal of the probationary employees, again, that was something that was directed from OPM,” DiMartini told IRS employees in a town hall last month. “And even the letters that your colleagues received yesterday were letters that written by OPM, put forth through Treasury, and given to us. … I cannot explain to you why this has happened. I’ve never seen OPM direct people at any agency to terminate.”

She added that “our actions are being watched by OPM—so that’s, again, something else that’s unprecedented.”

Helland, said in a letter to the court that DiMartini’s ouster by Treasury Department officials was unrelated and done “without any knowledge of this case.” Attorneys for the unions and advocacy groups said that was false and that DiMartini was willing to testify under subpoena.

“Ms. DiMartini has information that is directly relevant to this matter, involving OPM’s directions to agencies to terminate probationary employees, and the adverse personnel actions taken against her are directly related to that issue,” they said in a legal filing.

In a sworn court declaration filed Feb. 26, Ezell asserted that “OPM did not direct agencies to terminate any particular probationary employees based on performance or misconduct, and did not create a ‘mass termination program.’” The personnel agency merely created a “focused review” process, he said. “Agencies took their own actions to terminate employees the agencies did not wish to retain,” Ezell said.

The judge said at a hearing last month that he found such claims unbelievable, and that the evidence in the case indicated OPM did order the mass firings.

Alsup had ordered Ezell to give court testimony under oath to clarify the personnel agency’s role in the terminations. Helland did not raise objections to that order during a hearing last month in San Francisco. But in court papers afterward, Trump administration attorneys said “compelling the testimony of an acting agency head would pose major separation-of-powers concerns, especially at this early stage of litigation.”

The judge then reiterated his order directing Ezell to testify, noting that he had already submitted a court declaration in the case and was therefore subject to cross-examination. The Justice Department responded by withdrawing his court declaration, saying Ezell “lacks specific knowledge of disputed issues of fact” and would not be taking the stand.

Before the mass firings, the United States employed about 200,000 probationary workers, representing about 10 percent of its civilian federal workforce. Tens of thousands already have been dismissed, often with a template email provided by OPM that falsely cites performance reasons for the terminations. Trump and other administration officials have said the cuts are meant to reduce the size of the federal workforce.

“In one case, five days before he was terminated for performance, he got a glowing report. That was a guy in the NSA, I think,” Alsup said at the hearing last month, before issuing the temporary restraining order. “That doesn’t look right. That’s just not right in our country, is it? That we run our agencies with lies like that and stain somebody’s record for the rest of their life? Who is going to want to work in a government that would do that to them?”

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