WASHINGTON — President Trump’s lawyers urged the Supreme Court on Monday to block a judge’s order requiring the government to “immediately” rehire 16,000 federal employees.
In an emergency appeal, they argued that U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco had no legal authority to second-guess the administration’s personnel decisions.
The appeal is the first asking the high court to weigh in on the administration’s aggressive plan to shrink the federal workforce.
Acting Solicitor Gen. Sarah Harris said the judge’s “extraordinary reinstatement order violates the separation of powers, arrogating to a single district court the Executive Branch’s powers of personnel management on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines. That is no way to run a government.”
She said the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had yet to rule on the administration’s appeal of the judge’s order, and asked the high court to put the judge’s order on hold, at least temporarily.
While federal employees have legal rights as civil servants, those rights have proved to be largely ineffective in fighting the large-scale layoffs.
Unions representing tens of thousands of federal employees sued in late January, but their suits were tossed out on the grounds that the civil service law requires employees to lodge their complaints with an administrative agency inside the government.
The Supreme Court has said this is the exclusive route for such claims.
As a fallback option, Alsup, an appointee of President Clinton, cited claims from people who rely on the National Park Service or on the Veteran Affairs, Defense, Energy, Agriculture, Interior and Treasury departments.
Speaking in his courtroom, he ordered those agencies to “offer reinstatement to any and all probationary employees terminated on or about February 13th and 14th 2025.”
Harris did not describe what the administration has done to comply with the order.
She said the Supreme Court “should not allow a single district court to … seize control over reviewing federal personnel decisions.”
The justices are likely to ask for a response from the lawyers who filed suit in San Francisco.
