Another big setback today for Donald Trump. His mass firings so far have been largely focused on probationary employees. However, a federal union argues that it's all a huge scam:
“OPM, the federal agency charged with implementing this nation’s employment laws, in one fell swoop has perpetrated one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country, telling tens of thousands of workers that they are being fired for performance reasons, when they most certainly were not,” attorneys for the unions said in a court filing.
Judge William Alsup very decidedly agreed:
“Congress has given the authority to hire and fire to the agencies themselves. The Department of Defense, for example, has statutory authority to hire and fire,” Alsup said from the bench as he handed down the ruling Thursday evening in San Francisco federal court. “The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees at another agency. They can hire and fire their own employees.”
....“How could so much of the workforce be amputated, suddenly, overnight? It’s so irregular and so widespread and so aberrant in the history of our country.... I don’t believe it.”
Needless to say, this will be appealed, probably on standing grounds. Stay tuned.
In what way is this a setback for Donald Trump? It might be a setback if he actually had to stop firing people, but that's not the same thing as merely being told by a judge that he had to stop firing people.
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Good ol' Wild Bill Alsup! ND Cal. is a pretty good court, and Alsup is a big part of the reason why.
"In a great set back for Biff and his daily harassment of his smaller classmate, Billy, Billy's mom has told him to stop it"
An instructive thread on the Trump maladministration's attitude toward court orders... https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qrq3ybgokbsqivyiap7vnin4/post/3lj6rw56hy22b
That's just mass butchery.
I think that's the point. All those sick people are a drag on economy, unless they can pay, in which case it's free markets.
No worries, Roberts got this.
“Needless to say, this will be appealed, probably on standing grounds.”
Of course an appeals court somewhere will find that the union representing federal workers has no standing to sue for the wrongful termination of those workers. Because nothing matters anymore.