Donald Trump Faces New Legal Challenge Over Federal Job Cuts

The Trump administration faces a lawsuit from several labor unions that have taken issue with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) pushing job cuts on probationary workers that the unions contend were done illegally.

Newsweek reached out to the Office of Personnel Management and Department of Justice for comment.

Why It Matters

The Department of Government efficiency (DOGE), an unofficial agency established through executive order, has pursued an aggressive initiative to cut the size and scope of the federal government. The group has leaned heavily on staffing cuts to try to achieve early gains, seeming to operate with the Silicon Valley philosophy of "move fast and break things."

To achieve this, DOGE has worked with OPM to hit staffing at agencies across the federal government. This has resulted in at least two instances of firing necessary employees and scrambling to rehire them, including a few hundred nuclear safety personnel at the Department of Energy and staff who worked on containing bird flu at the Department of Agriculture.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan this week, however, knocked back one effort lodged by state attorneys general to sue the administration over firing employees, arguing that plaintiffs in that case failed to demonstrate damages.

What To Know

The OPM on February 13 ordered agencies to terminate all probationary employees, changing course on an earlier order that said only to do so with those with a poor performance.

Probationary employees are usually those with less than one or two years of service, depending on the job. Those employees are more vulnerable than other types of federal employees, but they can be fired only for poor performance or misconduct, according to Reuters.

A complaint was filed against the OPM on Wednesday night in San Francisco federal court, arguing that the department lacked authority to direct federal agencies to fire tens of thousands of probationary employees. The lawsuit also names Charles Ezell in his official capacity as acting director of the agency.

The groups behind the lawsuit include the American Federation of Government Employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFGE Local 1216 and United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals.

The lawsuit alleges that the OPM "in one fell swoop has perpetrated one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country, telling tens of thousands of workers that they are being fired for performance reasons, when they most certainly were not."

"OPM is an agency with no statutory authority to make termination decisions for federal employees (Other than for OPM's own employees)," the lawsuit said. "Notwithstanding this lack of legal authority, OPM ordered federal agencies throughout the nation, including in this District, to wipe out their ranks of probationary employees without any regard to applicable statutes."

As such, the plaintiffs have asked the court to declare OPM's order unlawful, enter a preliminary or permanent injunctive relief and award plaintiffs' costs.

What People Are Saying

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent, earlier this month on X, formerly Twitter: "Just like Bezos and Musk wished, Trump neutered the National Labor Relations Board. Now, union-busting corporations can exploit their employees with impunity. Last I checked, that's not standing with workers the way Trump promised."

The Wall Street Editorial Board this week: "Republicans are enjoying increasing support from low-income workers, but too many think unions are key to that support. They're not. Today's union leaders tilt sharply left on culture, economics and even foreign policy."

What Happens Next

The labor unions will seek a swift ruling to remedy the employment status for its members, but rulings can take anywhere from a day for temporary relief to a week for a more considered ruling.