A federal judge on Thursday rejected labor unions’ request for a restraining order halting President Trump’s firing of thousands of new federal employees who were still working on a probationary period.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the president’s moves were beyond the court’s reach at this point.
“The court will now deny the motion because it likely lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the unions’ claims,” he wrote. He said Mr. Trump’s challengers must first go through the Federal Labor Relations Authority before turning to the courts.
The challengers — a group of labor unions led by the National Treasury Employees Union — said the scale of Mr. Trump’s firings was so great and unprecedented that it needed to be met with unprecedented action by the courts.
NTEU said the longer the firings are allowed to remain, the more dues it loses from federal employees — money it might not be able to recoup, even if the employees are eventually reinstated.
But Judge Cooper said NTEU’s inconvenience doesn’t trump the law.
“The court acknowledges that district court review of these sweeping executive actions may be more expedient. But NTEU provides no reason why it could not seek relief from the FLRA on behalf of a class of plaintiffs and admits that it would ask other agencies to follow an administrative judge’s ruling in its favor,” the judge wrote.
Trump agencies have been ousting probationary employees government-wide, from Veterans Affairs to the Interior Department to Health and Human Services.
They are employees who have been on the job less than two years and lack full civil-service protections, making them easy targets for ouster.
Trump officials said they are trying to achieve cost savings without crushing services. Critics said the cuts were so deep that they have to affect services and that eliminating the new employees effectively kneecaps the future of the federal workforce.
NTEU had asked the judge to restore the probationary employees and to issue a blockade on any Trump plans for a future reduction in the federal workforce.
Mr. Trump has been on a torrid pace of executive actions, which has been met with an equally frenetic pace of legal challenges.
“The first month of President Trump’s second administration has been defined by an onslaught of executive actions that have caused, some say by design, disruption and even chaos in widespread quarters of American society,” Judge Cooper wrote.
He said Mr. Trump has seen a mixed record in the legal battles so far, which he said “should surprise no one.”
“Federal district judges are duty-bound to decide legal issues based on even-handed application of law and precedent — no matter the identity of the litigants or, regrettably at times, the consequences of their rulings for average people,” Judge Cooper wrote.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.