By Tierney Sneed, CNN
(CNN) — A second federal judge ruled Thursday that thousands of probationary employees laid off en mass by the Trump administration must be temporarily reinstated to their jobs.
The new temporary restraining order from Senior Judge James Bredar, an Obama-appointee, covers 18 agencies and will last two weeks, as a challenge to the terminations from Democratic state attorneys general moves forward.
It comes after a federal judge presiding over a separate lawsuit in California reversed mass layoffs of probationary workers among a smaller list of agencies earlier Thursday, though Bredar’s legal reasoning for reinstating the employees differs from that of the California judge, Judge William Alsup.
In the states’ case, filed in Baltimore’s federal court, the attorneys general argued that the administration had violated a 6-day notice requirement for so-called reductions in force – or RIFS – as well as other procedural steps for such mass terminations. The administration countered that no such notice was required for the layoffs, done quickly in early days of the administration, because federal law allows the government to terminate probationary employees under certain circumstances without any heads up.
Bredar on Thursday rejected the administration’s arguments that the terminations fit into a category not requiring notice because the employees were fired because of their substandard performance.
“Here, the terminated probationary employees were plainly not terminated for cause,” Bredar wrote in a 56-page opinion. “The sheer number of employees that were terminated in a matter of days belies any argument that these terminations were due to the employees’ individual unsatisfactory performance or conduct.”
He said that the administration’s “contention to the contrary borders on the frivolous.”
The upshot of Bredar’s ruling, as he acknowledged at a hearing Tuesday, is that the administration would be allowed to lay off the employees in mass if it went through the proper RIF procedures, including the advance notice. His ruling also noted the administration is free to fire individualized employees without following the RIF rules if they are being fired for cause, “on the basis of good-faith individualized determinations.”
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