Fired employees expressed excitement about the prospect of reinstatement, as well as back pay. But there’s no template for rehiring en masse.
Last month, thousands of employees with probationary status across the federal government were fired by the Trump administration in an extraordinary and coordinated move. On Thursday, a pair of court rulings called for agencies to reinstate a untold number of them.
What happens now isn’t so clear cut.
Agencies are sorting out how to bring back these employees and give them the back pay ordered by the courts. Some of the fired workers may indeed return to their jobs. Others may be placed on administrative leave until their agencies undergo a round of large-scale layoffs, the planning for which is already underway.
The mass firings of probationary workers were just one early phase of President Trump’s aggressive plan to shrink the federal government. His administration appeared to target probationary employees because they do not have the same civil service protections as employees who have been in their job longer. But a flurry of challenges to the legality of how Trump officials went about ordering up the personnel changes have resulted in some reprieves, at least temporarily or on paper.
In interviews and on social media, fired employees expressed excitement about being reinstated and getting paid for the days since they were fired. Still, many employees are in the dark, learning details about their livelihood through media reports.
Here is what we know about the reinstatements, and what we don’t.
What did the judges order?
The rulings, in federal courts in California and Maryland, call for a pause in the firings and reinstatement of probationary employees across 19 agencies. The cases themselves will continue to move forward, with the government planning to appeal.
But the plaintiffs’ goals were to at least temporarily stop the administration from firing more probationary workers and obtain relief, such as back pay, for the employees already out of work.