14 Mar 2025

Second Judge Orders Rehiring of Thousands of Fired Federal Workers

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Federal District Court Judge James Bredar issued a temporary restraining order to make federal departments rehire thousands of probationary employees they abruptly mass-fired.

In his ruling, Bredar wrote:

“In this case, the government conducted massive layoffs, but it gave no advance notice. It claims it wasn’t required to because, it says, it dismissed each one of these thousands of probationary employees for ‘performance’ or other individualized reasons. On the record before the Court, this isn’t true. There were no individualized assessments of employees. They were all just fired. Collectively.”

Bredar set a deadline of 17 March 2025 13:00 to reinstate the fired employees at the Departments of:

  • Agriculture
  • Commerce
  • Education
  • Energy
  • Health and Human Services
  • Homeland Security
  • Housing and Urban Development
  • Interior
  • Labor
  • Transportation
  • Treasury
  • Veterans Affairs

and also at these agencies:

  • Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
  • Environmental Protection Agency
  • Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
  • General Service Administration
  • Small Business Administration
  • U.S. Agency for International Development

The judge omitted the Defense Department, National Archives and Office of Personnel Management due to “insufficient evidence” that their mass firings constituted a stealth Reduction In Force.

Acknowledging the scale of the remedy he prescribed, Bredar wrote:

“The Court is not blind to the practical reality that the relief being ordered today will have far-reaching impacts on the federal workforce and will require the Government to expend considerable resources in an effort to undo the [reductions in force] that have been put into place.”

“When, as is likely the case here, the Government has engaged in an illegal scheme spanning broad swaths of the federal workforce, it is inevitable that the remediation of that scheme will itself be a significant task.”

Bredar’s ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the Attorneys General of several Democratically run states.

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