US Supreme Court halts reinstatement of fired federal employees

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Reuters

April 8, 2025 12:48 PM EDT Updated 20 min ago


April 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court blocked on Tuesday a judge's order for President Donald Trump's administration to rehire thousands of fired employees, acting in a dispute over his effort to slash the federal workforce and dismantle parts of the government.

The court put on hold San Francisco-based U.S. Judge William Alsup's March 13 injunction requiring six federal agencies to reinstate thousands of recently hired probationary employees while litigation challenging the legality of the dismissals continues.

The court in a brief, unsigned order said the nine non-profit organizations who were granted an injunction in response to their lawsuit lacked the legal standing to sue. The court said that its order did not address claims by other plaintiffs in the case, "which did not form the basis of the district court's preliminary injunction." Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly dissented from the decision.

Alsup's ruling applied to probationary employees at the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department. In a separate case, a federal judge in Baltimore also ordered the administration to reinstate thousands of fired probationary workers at 18 federal agencies in 19 mostly Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C., which had sued over the mass firings.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-halts-reinstatement-fired-federal-employees-2025-04-08/

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As a note - there are a pile of cases dealing with the re-hiring of federal employees and this appears to deal with this one case by this particular group of plaintiffs (lack of standing).

Article updated.

Original article -

April 8, 2025 12:03 PM EDT Updated 5 min ago


April 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court blocked on Tuesday a judge's order for President Donald Trump's administration to rehire thousands of fired employees, acting in a dispute over his effort to slash the federal workforce and dismantle parts of the government.

The court put on hold San Francisco-based U.S. Judge William Alsup's March 13 injunction requiring six federal agencies to reinstate thousands of recently hired probationary employees while litigation challenging the legality of the dismissals continues.

The court in a brief, unsigned order said the nine non-profit organizations who were granted an injunction in response to their lawsuit lacked the legal standing to sue. The court said that its order did not address claims by other plaintiffs.

Alsup's ruling applied to probationary employees at the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department.

[CousinIT]

1. Of course they did. This court will protect Trump AT. ALL. COSTS. nt

[Miguelito Loveless]

2. Gosh, and all these people have been chastizing me

for refusing to believe the Court wasn't in trump's pocket.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. There are a bunch of cases related to this same issue by different groups

and the ruling doesn't affect those (and those also have orders to return employees in selected agencies too).

I heard something over the weekend about how there have been over 150 suits filed against the 45 administration so far!

[angrychair]

3. SCOTUS shits on the US again

So I guess every single individual employee has to sue to get their position back?

[BumRushDaShow]

6. I think the later suits have featured "individuals" along with various organizations

The earlier suits (like this one) were being tossed for "lack of standing" as those orgs couldn't "show harm to themselves" (as organizations).

[lapfog_1]

5. to fix this country, there is a list of things that are needed

a. Destroy the right wing media that is brainwashing 35 percent of low IQ Americans
b. arrest the billionaires that want to impose their ideology on the rest of us, seize their assets and deport any that are not native to the USA... put the rest in prison ( I'm sure we can find some illegal shit they are doing )
c. remove all conservatives from SCOTUS ( a reset of the court, fire all Trump appointed judges no matter what )
d. institute nationwide free and fair elections with hand counted mail in ballots ( no same day voting, give us 2 weeks or more to vote by mail)
e. arrest and put in prison one Donald J. Trump for being a Russian operative.

[FirstLight]

12. Maybe judges should be appointed by someone other than the president

Maybe not even Congress. Maybe it should be a coalition of governors? I don't want to say elections because I don't want money involved so if there was any kind of election for a judge it would have to be merit based only and there would be no advertising allowed. I don't know. I just think that any president being able to stack the court is not a good idea. And right now there's too much of a chance that they could all die off at the same time or something...

[BlueKota]

15. I have been thinking this for a long time.

At least let the American Bar Association and the top Constitutional scholars in the country prepare a list of qualified individuals, from which the President would have to choose one, instead of letting them just do random politically motivated picks.

[Mysterian]

13. If we just eliminated the electoral college and apportioned senators by population,

that would fix everything. But we need the support of the 90 million eligible citizens who did not vote, who are being harmed by the outlaw rump regime, to do that.

[lapfog_1]

17. that would certainly help

I don't think the founders ever imagined that one state would have 10x the population of another state.

If Wyoming or Alaska get 2 senators, California should get close to 30, Texas and Florida would get more as well...

But their model was the House of Lords and the House of Commons, I believe... and the six year terms were meant for the Senators to not be influenced as much as the 2 year term of a Congressperson by the passions of the moment.

But, this has proven to be a flaw in our system.

[in2herbs]

7. How can anyone say that our judiciary is "holding" when litigation that reaches the USSC

is reversed and it is clear the USSC supports F47?

[vapor2]

8. WE ARE ALL SCREWED

[bluestarone]

9. Bottom line this SC will not allow our democracy to survive.

That's a fact!

[TheRickles]

10. I agree with the above comments, but isn't this a commonly used loophole?

Groups that represent plaintiffs but don't personally have skin in the game often have their cases dismissed for lack of standing. Knowing the biases of the current SCOTUS, it seems wiser to pursue cases in which individual federal employees, or groups of them, file the suit. Sounds like that's also happening - will be interesting to see what new loopholes SCOTUS can come up with to dismiss them.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

11. This is NOT the end-because another judge has issued a more sweeping order in a lawsuit brought by the states

This was a case on standing based on the concept that some non-profits did not have standing. Several states have brought another lawsuit and have another injunction in place. These states appear to have a better standing argument than the non-profit

Link to tweet

[BlueKota]

14. In tsf first term I emailed my college history professor

Told him I was anxious over the similarities I was noticing between what was beginning to happen here and what happened in Germany and Russia during WWII. He said he saw the similarities too but that "we should be okay, as long as the courts hold."

I get these most recent decisions were based on technical venue and standing issues, but it also appears to give tsf's administration very convenient delays so they can calculate even more strategies to evade carrying out lower courts rulings. Meanwhile people who were given no due process or a chance to prove their innocence suffer horrors. When "justices," care more about technicalities than possibly saving an innocent person's life, are they really just?

In my opinion I don't think the SC is holding the line against the worst of tsf's administration. I don't believe we are going to be okay. I don't have the answers on what if anything can be done about that, but hopefully, other much smarter people than me, are preparing alternate emergency plans, instead of counting on this SC to do the morally right thing.

[Scalded Nun]

16. This needs to be repeated far, wide, and non-stop...

This is Mitch McConnell's doing, HIS SCOTUS.

He willingly and knowingly set the stage for the destruction of the US Constitution.

Without McConnell, SCOTUS might still be right-leaning, but not this treasonous, perverse undermining of 250 years of constitutional law.