Judge Rejects Unions’ Request to Pause Trump Administration Firings

The Washington Post

11:33 JST, February 21, 2025

A federal judge on Thursday declined to issue a temporary restraining order pausing President Donald Trump’s moves to fire thousands of employees who are on probationary status or deemed nonessential, clearing a roadblock for the new administration as it attempts sweeping changes to downsize the federal government.

U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, ruled against the National Treasury Employees Union and four other labor organizations that requested a temporary halt to the mass firings. More than half a million federal workers could lose their jobs through the Trump administration’s firings and a separate program of deferred resignations, or buyouts, the unions said in legal filings.

The judge’s ruling came just as more than 6,000 probationary employees at the IRS were set to be laid off starting Thursday, in the middle of tax-filing season. Cooper ruled that the unions must file their legal challenge with the Federal Labor Relations Authority, a panel of presidential appointees that hears labor disputes. Any decision from that board may be challenged in federal appellate court, the judge said.

“Federal district judges are duty-bound to decide legal issues based on evenhanded application of law and precedent – no matter the identity of the litigants or, regrettably at times, the consequences of their rulings for average people,” Cooper said in a written opinion Thursday.

The judge did not address the legal merits of the unions’ lawsuit, saying only that he lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. But he pointedly added that Trump’s first month in office has been marked by “an onslaught of executive actions that have caused, some say by design, disruption and even chaos in widespread quarters of American society.”

The unions argued that Trump’s wholesale staff reductions would be an unconstitutional violation of Congress’s domain over how to staff, fund and set priorities for federal agencies, and that the moves violate federal statutes and regulations. Justice Department attorneys said the president has the legal authority to “streamline and modernize the workforce.”

The Trump administration’s moves could wipe out an unprecedented 20 to 25 percent of the federal workforce, the five unions argued in court papers. The White House has said that 75,000 federal workers, or about 3 percent of the civilian workforce, already opted into the deferred resignation program. A federal judge in Massachusetts paused that program and then allowed it to resume this month, but the Trump administration is not accepting new applicants.

About 60 to 70 percent of IRS’s roughly 100,000 employees are deemed nonessential at any given time of year, and many of the estimated 15,000 probationary employees at the agency were hired with funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed in part to beef up tax enforcement, attorneys for the five unions said. That policy priority “would be thwarted” if Trump gets the green light to fire much of the agency’s staff, the attorneys said.

A contingency staffing plan for the Department of Health and Human Services says about 45 percent of the 91,649 total employees in fiscal 2025 are considered nonessential. Other agencies that could be swept up in the mass staffing reductions include the Energy and Agriculture departments, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Food and Nutrition Service, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the unions said in court filings.

In a statement, Doreen Greenwald, the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, called Cooper’s ruling “a temporary setback” and vowed to continue challenging the mass firings. The union said in court filings that at least 1,250 dues-paying members had been fired and that the union stands to lose “up to half of its revenue and around half of the workers that it represents” if the terminations proceed.

“Already too many federal employees and their families have been devastated by these indiscriminate layoffs, and soon their local economies will feel that pain, too,” the union’s statement said. “There is no doubt that the administration’s actions are an illegal end-run on Congress, which has the sole power to create and oversee federal agencies and their important missions regarding public health and safety, national security, economic growth and stability, and consumer protection.”

Justice Department attorneys representing the Trump administration said the unions did not have legal standing to challenge the staffing reductions in court because they had not yet shown they had been harmed by losing bargaining power or substantial revenue.

“The President is charged with directing the Executive Branch workforce, and he has determined that the politically accountable heads of his agencies should take steps to streamline and modernize the workforce through measures including voluntary deferred resignations, removal of certain probationary employees” and reductions in force, the Trump administration attorneys wrote.