A federal judge has ordered six agencies to permanently rehire probationary employees fired last month in mass terminations under the Trump administration. Another judge temporarily reinstated workers from 12 more agencies for two weeks while considering further action.
The rulings affect about 1,000 national park employees, including dozens in Colorado. Federal workers in Boulder from the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture are eligible for reinstatement. Probationary employees at NOAA, NIST, NIH, EPA and several other agencies are covered by the temporary rehiring order.
The Feb. 14-15 terminations stemmed from an order by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which the judges found lacked authority to fire employees from other agencies. OPM cited “poor performance” as the justification, but no evaluations were conducted, and Boulder Reporting Lab, along with other outlets, documented multiple cases of terminated employees with only positive reviews.
San Francisco Judge William Alsup called the government’s actions a “gimmick” to justify mass firings.
Among those affected is Boulder resident Emily Loker, a former community engagement lead at the Department of Energy. While her termination was rescinded with back pay, she’s uncertain about returning, as grant-funded projects she worked on have been paused or canceled.
“There isn’t much work for me to do, and I’ll just be let go in the reduction in force,” she said.
Another Boulder woman, who asked to remain anonymous, is eligible to return to what she described as her “dream job.” She relied on her federal position to support herself and her twin two-year-old daughters. Despite receiving a “superior qualifications” pay designation, she was fired under the mass layoffs and has yet to hear from her former department about reinstatement.
“Everyone knows at this point, it was completely indiscriminate,” she told Boulder Reporting Lab last month. “It was the low-hanging fruit.”
While the rulings mark a victory for affected employees, their jobs remain at risk. The Trump administration is moving forward with a broader reduction in force (RIF) that could impact 700,000 federal employees, according to Government Executive. Unlike probationary firings, a RIF eliminates doesn’t just eliminate employees but their positions, requiring agencies to justify cuts based on reorganization, workload reductions or budget constraints.
Legal challenges are already underway. A lawsuit from 20 states, including Colorado, argues the Department of Education’s RIF “is not supported by any actual reasoning” but is instead an attack on the agency’s existence.
“To simply run a RIF and then automatically contract the work out is not lawful,” said Jacqueline Simon, policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, in a statement to Federal News Network.
