U.S. government employees who have been fired in the Trump administration’s purge of recently hired workers are responding with class action-style complaints claiming that the mass firings are illegal and tens of thousands of people should get their jobs back.
Lawyers at two firms said on Thursday that they had filed six appeals with the federal Merit Systems Protection Board since last week and, along with other law firms, plan to bring about 15 more on an agency-by-agency basis on behalf of large groups of workers who were fired in recent weeks.
Federal workers must go through the merit board to challenge their terminations. But the panel’s work could be brought to a standstill if President Donald Trump succeeds in removing the board’s only Democratic member, Cathy Harris, who is locked in a legal battle with the administration to keep her job.
Harris on Tuesday ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to temporarily reinstate nearly 6,000 probationary employees, while the board considers a challenge to their firing. Probationary workers typically have less than a year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal workers.
The lawyers filing the new appeals, Christopher Bonk and Daniel Rosenthal, said the mass terminations of probationary employees amounted to layoffs that are supposed to be guided by complex rules.
Probationary workers have limited legal protections compared with other civil servants, but agencies are still required to explain why they are being fired and give them advance notice of mass layoffs.
“There are regulations in place to make sure that layoffs, when necessary and appropriate, are done with intentionality,” said Bonk, of the Maryland firm Gilbert Employment Law. “The Trump administration has willfully ignored the law.”
Appeals have been filed against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of Agriculture, Department of Veterans Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Interior and the Federal Deposit Insurance Company, the lawyers said. Reuters reviewed a redacted complaint filed against the Interior Department.
The Interior Department and the FDIC declined to comment. The other agencies and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
POLITICAL TURMOIL
The three-member merit board reviews federal workers’ appeals when they are fired or face discipline. Cases are typically first heard by administrative judges and then reviewed by the board, whose decisions can be appealed to a Washington, D.C.-based federal appeals court.
Trump fired Harris from the board last month, and the administration is appealing a federal judge’s ruling this week that said her removal was illegal. The term of another Democratic board member expired last week, leaving Harris and Acting Chair Henry Kerner, a Republican.
If Harris is ultimately removed, the board will not have a quorum of at least two members that can decide workers’ appeals. The agency’s resources are also likely to be strained by an influx of new cases. More than 4,800 appeals were filed between the week Trump took office and March 1, according to the board.
Trump had separately moved to fire Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel, a watchdog agency that can bring cases to the merit board on behalf of federal employees.
Dellinger filed the case that led Harris to reinstate workers at the Agriculture Department for 45 days. Only the Special Counsel, and not individual employees who file appeals with the board, can ask for a temporary ruling reinstating workers.
Dellinger sued over his firing and was briefly reinstated, but a federal appeals court temporarily allowed Trump to remove him and he dropped his legal challenge on Thursday.
Bonk and Rosenthal said the political turmoil was even more reason for federal workers to band together to challenge mass firings.
“There’s a lot that we don’t know about what’s going to happen, and that highlights the importance of bringing these appeals directly without going through the Special Counsel process,” said Rosenthal, of the firm James & Hoffman in Washington, D.C.
