Labor Department Staff Told Firings Weren’t Performance-Based

The US Labor Department notified probationary employees that were terminated en masse earlier this year that their firings were not performance-related, as demanded by a federal judge in April.

“DOL hereby, informs you, as required by the Court, that your earlier termination was not ‘performance’ or fitness based but was made as part of a government-wide mass termination,” the letter sent this week said, according to a copy obtained by Bloomberg Law.

The court-ordered clarification is emblematic of the problems the Trump administration has faced trying to rapidly cut tens of thousands of people from the federal workforce.

The agency was directed to send out the official written statements by Judge William Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California last month, who said in an April order that the termination letters stating employees were being fired for performance issues “was a total sham.”

“Termination under the false pretense of performance is an injury that will persist for the working life of each civil servant,” Alsup wrote in the April order. “The stain created by OPM’s pretense will follow each employee through their careers.”

Federal agencies, including the DOL, fired their probationary staff in the starting weeks of the Trump administration as part of the president’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce. At the DOL, roughly 170 probationary employees were fired, according to the government’s filings in the case.

Unions representing federal workers, including the American Federation of Government Employees, sued over the move in February, arguing the Office of Personnel Management lacked the authority to initiate the mass firings.

Alsup had directed the rehiring of probationary workers in March, a move that was later blocked by the Supreme Court. In April, he told the OPM it could no longer direct the firing of federal employees.

In the letter, the DOL notes that it’s appealing the order and “believes it to be both legally and factually erroneous.”

The case is: American Federation Of Government Employees, AFL-CIO v. Office of Personnel Management, N.D. Cal., No. 3:25-cv-01780.