Second judge says Trump must rehire those fired in mass layoffs

A second federal judge has ruled that thousands of federal employees who have been fired by the Trump administration through efforts put forward by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) need to be rehired.

US District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore, Maryland has ruled that the Trump administration ignored laws that are in place for mass layoffs from the federal government and ordered that the firings be stopped for at least two weeks. Bredar also ordered that those who have been fired by rehired. He ruled in favor of about two dozen states that challenged the administration's layoffs, who alleged that they were illegal, according to Fox News. He also ordered that the federal workforce go back to where it was at before the mass firings.

"In this case, the government conducted massive layoffs, but it gave no advance notice," Bredar wrote in the ruling. "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."    

It was a similar ruling to US District Judge William Alsup said that the mass firings from the Trump administration were a "sham" strategy from the executive branch to reduce the federal workforce. Alsup, who is a judge from San Francisco appointed by former President Bill Clinton, said that the Defense, Treasury, Energy, Interior, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs departments all had to "immediately" offer to give all jobs back to probationary workers who were fired by the administration, according to Politico.

The judge claimed that the Office of Personnel Management made an "unlawful" decision to fire the mass amounts of federal workers. Although he wrote in the decision that the executive agencies can still put into place “reductions in force" orders, they need to follow procedures to make such decisions.

“You will not bring the people in here to be cross-examined. You’re afraid to do so because you know cross examination would reveal the truth,” the judge told an attorney representing the DOJ on Thursday, as he accused the Trump administration of hiding about who directed the firings to take place. “I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth. … I’m tired of seeing you stonewall on trying to get at the truth."

Judge Alsup wrote in his decision that the Trump administration attempted to get around the firing laws within the federal government by attributing the mass firings taking place to lack of performance by employees, and called it "a gimmick."

“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said. He emphasized the point that the federal government could still fire people, but that it has to be done under certain pretense.

As President Donald Trump, as well as Elon Musk, have been looking into the costs taken up by different executive agencies, the administration has moved to cut mass amounts of employees as the US Agency for International Development, the Internal Revenue Service, and others. With the different waves of mass firings have also come legal challenges to the Trump administration.

In just a little over 50 days, over 100 legal cases have been filed against the Trump administration, many of them related to the firings.