The US Supreme Court lifted the block from a Judge’s order, forcing the administration to rehire 16,000 probationary workers. They were fired as the administration tried to decrease the size of the bloated bureaucracy.
This order came a day after a ruling in the White House’s favor to allow the continued deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members. Today’s ruling was less definitive.
The court struck down by a 7-2 majority last month’s ruling by US district court judge William Alsup because non-profit groups who had sued on behalf of the fired workers had no legal standing.
It did not rule on the firings themselves, which affected probationary workers in the Pentagon, the treasury, and the departments of energy, agriculture, interior, and veterans affairs.
In an emergency order, the high court stayed a California federal jurist’s command to rehire workers across six government departments—Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs—while concluding that nonprofit groups who challenged the firings lacked standing. This gave the White House a temporary win while litigation plays out in the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Workers at those six agencies will remain on paid administrative leave for now.
Two of the court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.
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