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U.S. Supreme Court

Nonprofits that challenged mass firings didn’t have standing, Supreme Court says while staying rehiring order

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 8, 2025, 1:31 pm CDT

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed a federal judge’s preliminary injunction that required the federal government to rehire as many as 16,000 fired probationary employees.

In its April 8 order, the Supreme Court said the injunction entered by Senior U.S. District Judge William H. Alsup of the Northern District of California was based solely on claims by nine nonprofit plaintiffs. But those groups did not have standing, the Supreme Court said.

The injunction was not based on claims by other plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Alsup. Alsup didn’t rule on claims by the labor union plaintiffs because he found that he probably didn’t have the power to hear them, according to SCOTUSblog.

The Supreme Court stay will remain in place throughout the litigation.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

SCOTUSblog, the Washington Post, the New York Times and Politico are among the publications with coverage.

According to Politico, “the decision’s ultimate impact is murky because another federal judge has issued a separate order reinstating many of the same probationary workers.”

Alsup had granted the preliminary injunction in a March 13 ruling from the bench, he said in a March 14 memorandum opinion. He ordered the employees’ reinstatement based on a finding that the Office of Personnel Management had no authority to fire employees of another agency. That authority belongs to each agency, he said.

Alsup’s injunction reinstated probationary workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and the Department of the Treasury, according to a March 13 press release.

The government has contended that the firings can only be contested by individual employees before the Merit Systems Protection Board.

The case is Office of Personnel Management v. American Federation of Government Employees.

See also:

Judge orders Trump officials to offer jobs back to fired probationary workers

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