Federal Judge Rules Firing Public-Land Workers Was Illegal, Agrees It ‘Will Inflict Immediate, Foreseeable Harm’ to Habitat and Wildlife

A federal judge in California issued a written order Friday to curb the sweeping firings of probationary federal employees at several government agencies, including three that work directly with public lands and steward America’s fish and wildlife. U.S. District Judge William Alsup’s written order, issued Feb. 28, came one day after he issued a verbal ruling from a federal courtroom in San Francisco.

“The ongoing, en masse termination of probationary employees across the federal government’s agencies has sown significant chaos,” Alsup wrote in the order. He cited Don Neubacher, the former superintendent of Yosemite National Park, who says the ongoing firings “will inflict immediate, foreseeable harm onto our national parks and the habitats and animals therein.”

The judge’s written order concludes that the recent layoffs of tens of thousands of probationary federal workers are “illegal” and “must be stopped.” (Alsup noted that the agencies have not disclosed the exact number of fired employees.) It directs Charles Ezell, the Trump administration’s personnel director at the Office of Personnel Management, to rescind memos that led to the purge of probationary employees at the Department of Defense, the Department of Veteran Affairs, and the Small Business Administration, as well as the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Alsup defines probationary employees as “those who have served less than one year in the competitive service or less than two in the expected service.”

Alsup’s ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by five private organizations who claim they were negatively impacted by the firings at these agencies. This includes the Western Watersheds Project, which works hand-in-hand with the BLM and USFWS and claims in the suit that it “has already had its ecological mission frustrated” because terminations at the BLM are preventing the agency from doing critical work, such as responding to FOIA requests.

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The ruling is limited to these agencies and does not apply to the widespread firings inside the U.S. Forest Service or other agencies under the umbrella of the USDA. This is because the five organizations did not claim in the lawsuit to be harmed by those firings, according to the Capital Press. 

In the verbal ruling he shared with the court on Feb. 27, Alsup referred to probationary employees as the “life blood” of the agencies. These are often younger federal employees who have worked their way up the ladder, and who represent the next generation of public servants. Alsup said it was wrong to stain their records by claiming they were fired for performance issues, when in many cases the employees had only received positive reviews from their supervisors. His written order includes excerpts from some of those performance reviews, including one glowing review issued to a national science director just five days before his firing.

“That’s the Way the Evidence Points”

Underpinning Alsup’s ruling is his belief that the OPM gave direct orders to the heads of these agencies to terminate probationary employees.

“No statute — anywhere, ever — has granted OPM the authority to direct the termination of employees in other agencies,” Alsup wrote. He said that issuing such a directive violates the Constitution and the independent authorities of these agencies as established by Congress.

Defense attorneys for OPM, meanwhile, are claiming in the lawsuit that the human-resources agency never directed the government agencies to fire anyone. They say that OPM only asked those agencies to “engage in a focused review” of probationary employees based on their performance.

Alsup took issue with this line of reasoning. His written order alludes to a “mountain of evidence” submitted by plaintiffs, including claims from multiple agency heads that they were explicitly directed by the OPM to fire probationary employees.

“How could so much of the workforce be amputated suddenly overnight? It’s so irregular and widespread, so aberrant in the history of the country,” he told the court Thursday. “I believe they were directed or ordered. That’s the way the evidence points.”

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Alsup has scheduled a follow-up hearing on March 13, reports the Capital Press. That hearing will feature Ezell and other agency leaders, and it will focus on what OPM told federal agencies in February via memos, emails, and phone calls. NPR reports that a separate complaint over the firings is working its way through the courts. 

Other attempts to reinstate fired federal public land workers have failed in recent weeks. This includes a Senate amendment that would have rehired thousands of employees at the BLM, NPS, USFWS, and USFS who were laid off on Feb. 14. That legislation died on Feb. 21, with only one Republican Senator, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, voting in favor of it.

The post Federal Judge Rules Firing Public-Land Workers Was Illegal, Agrees It ‘Will Inflict Immediate, Foreseeable Harm’ to Habitat and Wildlife appeared first on Outdoor Life.

Source: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/federal-judge-rules-probationary-firings-illegal/