WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — A federal appeals court on Monday denied the Trump administration’s emergency effort to block the reinstatement of federal employees at six government agencies.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected the government’s request to stay a Northern California district court’s March 13 ruling ordering the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs to reinstate thousands of probationary positions.
The newly hired or promoted employees were fired as part of an agenda to slash federal jobs carried out by President Donald Trump and billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk.
“Given that the district court found that the employees were wrongfully terminated and ordered an immediate return to the status quo ante, an administrative stay of the district court’s order would not preserve the status quo. It would do just the opposite — it would disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head,” according to the 9th Circuit order.
Judge Barry G. Silverman, a late 1990s President Bill Clinton appointee, and Judge Ana de Alba, appointed by President Joe Biden in 2023, issued the order, while Judge Bridget S. Bade, a 2019 Trump appointee, delivered a partial dissent.
The government’s response to the emergency motion is due by Tuesday. Further briefs are due throughout April and May. An appeals hearing has not yet been scheduled.
District judge ruling on firings
The Trump administration appealed the lower court’s decision just hours after Judge William Alsup’s extension of his emergency order directing the agencies to reinstate the positions.
Alsup also set Thursday as a deadline for a list of all terminated employees and an explanation of what federal agencies have done to comply with his order.
The White House decried the decision, saying ”a single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch,” according to a statement Thursday from press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Unions representing masses of federal employees sued Trump’s Office of Personnel Management and its acting director Charles Ezell in February over the agency’s unilateral directive across the agencies to fire tens of thousands of workers.
The affected agencies within the six departments included the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among several others.
On the same day as the decision out of California, a federal judge in Maryland issueda temporary restraining order mandating 20 federal agencies reinstate fired employees by Monday.
Chainsaw at CPAC
Musk, a senior White House adviser and top donor to Trump’s reelection, is the face of Trump’s workforce downsizing and has not shied away from sharing his plans on his social media platform, X.
He even wielded a chainsaw on stage in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D.C., and yelled to the audience “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.” The chainsaw was gifted to him by Argentina’s strongman President Javier Milei.
The White House has claimed in a court filing in a separate case that Musk has no decision-making power.
