After a lower court judge had barred most of the mass terminations, a federal appeals court lifted the injunction, allowing the Trump administration to continue dismissing thousands of probationary government employees.
On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reached the conclusion that the group of Democratic attorneys general who presented the case seemed to lack the necessary legal authority to contest the dismissals.
The 2-1 decision by the appeals court followed the Supreme Court’s decision the day before, again on standing grounds, to vacate a lower court’s order preventing the firing of some of the same federal employees. This removes any lingering legal hurdles to the Trump administration’s plan to reduce the size of the federal workforce through the mass termination of workers at over twenty important federal agencies.
The Republican attorneys general did not have standing, according to Trump nominee Judge Allison Rushing and Reagan appointee Harvie Wilkinson. A judge appointed by Biden, DeAndrea Benjamin, disagreed, saying that the attorneys general had a right to sue on their states’ behalf.
The decision of the 4th Circuit overturns the order of Obama appointee U.S. District Judge James Bredar, who was stationed in Maryland, dated April 1. According to Bredar’s findings, the federal government disregarded regulations mandating state notification prior to implementing mass layoffs. He first directed the Trump administration to restore all terminated probationary employees from 18 federal agencies around the country, but he then honed down on just the people residing or employed in the states that had taken legal action.
