President Donald Trump - Photo by AFP
Feb 20 (Reuters) – The Trump administration can continue its firings of federal employees, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, rejecting a bid by a group of labor unions to halt President Donald Trump’s downsizing of the roughly 2.3 million federal workforce.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington, D.C. federal court is temporary while the litigation plays out. But it is a win for the Trump administration as it seeks to purge the federal workforce and slash wasteful and fraudulent government spending.
The National Treasury Employees Union and four other unions sued last week to block the administration from firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and granting buyouts to employees who quit voluntarily.
The unions are seeking to block eight agencies including the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Department of Veterans Affairs from implementing the layoffs.
Judge Cooper on Thursday said he likely lacks the power to hear the case, and that the unions instead must file complaints with a federal labor board that hears disputes between unions and federal agencies.
Trump has tapped Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has swept through federal agencies slashing thousands of jobs and dismantling federal programs since Trump became president last month and put Musk in charge of rooting out the wasteful spending as part of Trump’s overhaul of government. Trump also ordered federal agencies to work closely with DOGE to identify federal employees who could be laid off.
Most civil service employees can be fired legally only for bad performance or misconduct, and they have a host of due process and appeal rights if they are let go arbitrarily. The probationary employees primarily targeted in last week’s wave have fewer legal protections.
A judge overseeing a similar case in Boston federal court allowed the buyouts to move forward in a ruling on February 12, finding labor unions that filed the case did not have legal standing to bring the lawsuit because they had not shown how they would be harmed by the plan.
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