Federal Judge Orders Trump to Rehire Thousands of Fired Federal Workers

By streiff | 2:57 PM on March 13, 2025

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*Gavel in a courtroom. (Credit: Midjourney AI, created by Jeff Charles)*

A federal judge in San Francisco ordered the Trump administration to rehire thousands of federal employees in six federal agencies who had been terminated since President Trump's inauguration. Ruling from the bench, 79-year-old Clinton appointee Judge William Alsup castigated the administration.

“You will not bring the people in here to be cross-examined. You’re afraid to do so because you know cross examination would reveal the truth,” the judge said to a DOJ attorney during a hearing Thursday. “I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth. … I’m tired of seeing you stonewall on trying to get at the truth.”
Alsup also said the administration attempted to circumvent federal laws on reducing the workforce by attributing the firings to “performance” when that was not in fact the case. The judge called the move “a gimmick.”
“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said.

This is pretty much the kind of unhinged statement the Trump administration has gotten used to hearing from power-drunk federal judges.

The case involved thousands of federal workers holding probationary or term appointments in the Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs departments. Alsup ruled that the Office of Personnel Management had no authority to order the terminations, even when acting on behalf of the president, and that the departments could only terminate these employees by following the Reduction in Force Act, though the law does not seem to apply to the situation at hand.

I'm not one to use the term "Constitutional crisis" loosely, but if this ruling stands, I think we are at that point. Alsup's decision means federal agencies cannot legally respond to a White House directive to reduce their headcount. It also changes the legal status of probationary and term appointments to tenure rather than how they have been traditionally viewed. IANAL, but I think the ability of the American Federation of Government Employees to intervene on behalf of employees who are not represented by a bargaining unit in an employment matter is highly suspect.

This case will be appealed and ultimately overturned because if it isn't, then Article 2, Section 1 of the US Constitution has ceased to exist.

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