A federal judge Thursday night ordered that thousands of federal workers fired by the Trump administration be temporarily reinstated.
U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order against dozens of agencies, departments and their leaderships across the federal government that had terminated workers as part of reduction-in-workforce efforts.
“In this case, the government conducted massive layoffs, but it gave no advance notice. It claims it wasn’t required to because, it says, it dismissed each one of these thousands of probationary employees for ‘performance’ or other individualized reasons,” Bredar wrote in his ruling.
“On the record before the Court, this isn’t true. There were no individualized assessments of employees. They were all just fired. Collectively,” he added.
Hours earlier, a federal judge in California directed that the departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Energy, Interior, Agriculture and Treasury offer reinstatement to the thousands of probationary employees the Trump administration terminated last month. The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal in that case.
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The order from Bredar applies to 12 departments that have fired probationary workers: the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.
It also applies to probationary workers who were terminated recently at the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the General Service Administration and the Small Business Administration.
They were given a deadline of before March 17 at 1 p.m. ET to reinstate the affected employees.
Bredar acknowledged the impact of his order amid the government’s dismissal of about 200,000 probationary employees — workers who are either recent hires or had taken new positions — since President Donald Trump took office in January.
“The Court is not blind to the practical reality that the relief being ordered today will have far-reaching impacts on the federal workforce and will require the Government to expend considerable resources in an effort to undo the [reductions in force] that have been put into place,” Bredar wrote.
“When, as is likely the case here, the Government has engaged in an illegal scheme spanning broad swaths of the federal workforce, it is inevitable that the remediation of that scheme will itself be a significant task,” he added.
A group of states with Democratic attorneys general had brought the lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order that would allow the terminated employees to have their jobs restored, arguing that the Trump administration ignored protocol for the mass terminations of federal employees.
The Defense Department, the Office of Personnel Management and the National Archives were excluded from the judge’s order due to the provision of “insufficient evidence” that a reduction in force had occurred, Bredar wrote.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta lauded the ruling in a post on X.
“We’re pleased with the court’s decision to restrain the Trump Admin’s reckless directive and we’ll continue to monitor and ensure compliance,” he wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
