Trump Evaded Order to Correct Fired Workers’ Record, Judge Says

The Trump administration flouted a court order that demanded it limit damage to probationary federal workers who were wrongly told they were fired for cause, a California federal judge said.

Judge William Alsup of the US District Court of Appeals for the Northern District of California accused the government on Thursday of refusing to send letters to fired probationary workers to clarify they weren’t let go for performance reasons.

The court order—aimed at reducing harm to employees’ future job prospects—came as part of a lawsuit over the firings of 16,000 new or recently promoted federal workers who were terminated earlier this year as part of President Donald Trump’s workforce purge. Federal-sector unions are suing to have the employees reinstated and block future firings, after the US Supreme Court allowed the cuts to move forward temporarily.

“These agencies are refusing to send out the letter that I ordered,” Alsup told a US Department of Justice attorney. “Why isn’t that fairly traceable to the original sin?”

When Kelsey Helland, the DOJ attorney, replied that agencies had, in fact, complied with the order, Alsup was more pointed. “Is that proven up in our record somewhere, or is that just you talking?” the judge said.

When Helland provided a copy of one of the letters from the US Department of Commerce, Alsup criticized a disclaimer in the document stating that the agency disagreed with the court’s order. The disclaimer said the department believed the court’s order to be “legally and factually erroneous” and planned to appeal.

“This letter hems and haws—it says you’re appealing, that you don’t agree with the facts,” Alsup said. “So what is a future employer supposed to make of this?”

“Put yourself in the position of the poor employee in ten years, trying to explain that they were not fired for cause,” he added.

Alsup previously expressed disdain for the way the government carried out the firings, calling the first round of termination letters a “total sham.”

Plaintiffs are asking the court to reinstate workers at at least half a dozen agencies, including the departments of Education, Commerce, Homeland Security, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development, as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Trump administration has argued that the unions’ complaints should be routed through the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the Merit Systems Protection Board, and that further court action would be improper. On Thursday, it rebuffed the unions’ claim that the Office of Personnel Management exceeded its authority by directing agency personnel decisions, presenting internal correspondence to argue that it only had an advisory role.

Helland said OPM was helping agencies comply with Trump’s hiring freeze on the federal workforce, which raised questions about whether probationary employees could be brought on full-time.

“Probationary periods are the last step of the hiring process,” Helland said. “An employee is not a permanent employee until they make it through the probationary period.”

“Are these agencies supposed to hire people—make them permanent federal employees even though the president just said there’s a hiring freeze?” she said.

The case is AFGE v. Trump, N.D. Cal., 3:25-cv-01780