By Stephen Dinan The Washington Times Thursday, March 13, 2025

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to bring back thousands of fired probationary employees, saying their ouster was illegal.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee who sits in California, said the Office of Personnel Management had no authority to direct other agencies to fire the employees.

“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” the judge said in ruling from the bench.

Probationary employees have been on the job less than a year or less than two years at some particular posts. Trump officials said they were easy targets because they hadn’t built years of experience critical to their agencies and, as probationary employees, lacked full civil service protection.

OPM issued a memo to departments telling them to review their lists of probationary employees and decide which ones to keep.

Departments then carried out waves of firings.

The Trump administration argued that the firings were decisions made by the agencies, not at the specific direction of OPM. Judge Alsup didn’t believe that.

He slammed the Justice Department’s handling of the case, complaining it wouldn’t allow OPM Director Charles Ezell to testify while the department withdrew his declaration from evidence in the case to keep him from the stand.

“I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth,” the judge told the government, calling the situation a “sham.”