The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with the Trump administration and upheld the mass firing of tens of thousands of probationary federal employees, granting a request for an emergency administrative stay on a lower court order blocking the firings.
The majority of the high court ruled that the plaintiffs, nine non-profit organizations who had sued to reinstate the employees, lacked standing to sue.
“The District Court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case. But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing,” the court said in an order.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the application for a stay.
In their final brief to the Supreme Court, government attorneys argued that lower courts overstepped their authority by ordering the reinstatement of probationary employees last month.
The legal battle stems from the termination of an estimated 16,000 probationary federal employees since President Donald Trump took office, prompting a wave of lawsuits from Democrat-led states and former workers.
Probationary employees are particularly vulnerable to termination because they lack the civil service protections granted to full-time federal workers, which typically take effect after a