Nearly 6,000 USDA workers fired by Trump ordered back to work for now

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A U.S. Department of Agriculture headquarters building is seen in Washington, D.C. / AFP via Getty Images

An independent federal board has ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to temporarily reinstate close to 6,000 employees fired since Feb. 13, finding reasonable grounds to believe the agency acted illegally in terminating them.

The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) issued a stay, ordering the USDA to return the fired workers to their jobs for 45 days while an investigation continues. The MSPB acts as an internal court to consider federal employees' complaints against the government.

The order, from board member Cathy Harris, covers probationary employees who received identical termination letters informing them that, based on their performance, they had not demonstrated that their further employment "would be in the public interest."

Since the middle of February, the Trump administration has fired tens of thousands of probationary employees across the federal government, typically those in their first or second year on the job.

The order comes in response to a request from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which is investigating the firings of probationary employees. It follows a similar decision issued last week that temporarily reinstated six probationary workers fired from six different agencies. Those employees are now back on the job at least through April 10, according to their lawyer, Michelle Bercovici.

In a statement, Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger urged all federal agencies to reinstate probationary employees, even without a direct order.

"Agencies are best positioned to determine the employees impacted by these mass terminations," Dellinger wrote. "That's why I am calling on all federal agencies to voluntarily and immediately rescind any unlawful terminations of probationary employees."

(The OSC, which investigates allegations of wrongdoing by the government against federal employees and job applicants, is separate from the special counsels appointed by the Justice Department.)

Investigation of USDA led to request for a broad stay

Dellinger requested the broad stay for USDA employees last week after gaining a clear picture of how the firings of close to 6,000 people occurred.

"Documents that OSC obtained and interviews that OSC conducted with USDA officials confirmed that USDA relied heavily on OPM guidance in terminating its probationary employees," he wrote, referring to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the agency that handles many human resource functions for the government.

He concluded that the USDA did not look at individual employee performance or conduct when deciding whom to fire, a requirement for terminating federal employees during the probationary period.

Instead, he found that the USDA was trying to achieve a reorganization — a massive reduction in force, in line with OPM's directive to eliminate all positions not deemed "mission-critical." Agencies conducting mass layoffs for reorganization purposes must go through certain procedures, including providing employees with 60 days' notice. The USDA failed to do this, Dellinger found.

Separately, the Trump administration has, in fact, begun to issue such mass-layoff notices at the USDA and elsewhere. It is seeking to shed large swaths of the federal workforce, even as legal challenges to its summary firings of probationary employees gain steam.

The exact number of USDA probationary employees covered by Harris' order is unclear. In February, the department told OSC it had fired 5,950 probationary employees. On Monday, the USDA provided a list of only 5,692 names, according to the MSPB's order.

"OSC states that the agency cautioned that this number was still in flux due to corrections, rehirings, and changes to mission-critical designations," the order noted.

Both Dellinger and Harris themselves were fired by Trump only to be reinstated by courts in recent weeks, after judges found that they had been improperly removed.

A separate challenge to the Trump administration's firing of probationary employees is advancing in federal court. Last week, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the mass firings likely violated multiple statutes. On Tuesday, OPM revised a January memo to federal agencies, noting that it was not directing them to take any personnel actions and that decision-making authority was in their hands.

Have information you want to share about ongoing changes across the federal government? NPR's Andrea Hsu can be contacted through encrypted communications on Signal at andreahsu.08.