By Daniel Wiessner and Nate Raymond
March 13 (Reuters) - Federal judges in California and Maryland on Thursday ordered U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to reinstate thousands of probationary federal workers who lost their jobs as part of mass firings carried out at 19 agencies.
The back-to-back rulings were the most significant blow yet to the effort by Trump and top adviser Elon Musk to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy. Government agencies face a Thursday deadline to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and to slash their budgets.
U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore agreed with 20 Democratic-led states that 18 of the agencies which had fired probationary employees en masse in recent weeks violated regulations governing the laying off of federal workers.
Bredar's restraining order applies to, among other agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, all three of which have been in the deregulatory and cost-cutting cross-hairs of the Trump administration.
Other agencies covered by the judge's order include the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.
While the administration argued it dismissed each of the employees for performance or other individualized reasons, the judge said that was not true, which would make the job cuts a form of mass layoff necessitating advance notice to the states, who have obligations to assist their newly unemployed citizens.
"The sheer number of employees that were terminated in a matter of days belies any argument that these terminations were due to the employees' individual unsatisfactory performance or conduct," wrote Bredar, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama.
His decision came hours after U.S. District Judge William Alsup during a hearing in San Francisco ordered the reinstatement of probationary employees terminated at six agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, which was not covered by the Maryland decision.
Alsup said the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the human resources department for federal agencies, had improperly ordered those agencies to fire workers en masse even though it lacked the power to do so.
"It is 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," said Alsup, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement issued following Alsup's decision said the administration would "immediately fight back."
"The President has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch - singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the President's agenda," Leavitt said.
24,000 PROBATIONARY WORKERS
Trump and Musk, architect of the administration's Department of Government Efficiency, are pursuing an aggressive campaign to shrink the federal workforce, made up of about 2.3 million workers when Trump took office in January.
The first round of mass firings focused on probationary workers, who have limited grounds to challenge their terminations. At least 24,000 have been terminated since Trump returned to office, according to the Democratic-led states, who filed their lawsuit challenging the firings last week.
Probationary workers typically have less than one year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees. They have fewer job protections than other government workers but in general, can only be fired for performance issues.
The states in their lawsuit say that by firing workers en masse, federal agencies engaged in mass layoffs that are supposed to be guided by a series of regulations. The agencies did not follow those procedures, though, such as giving state and local governments 60 days' notice in advance of mass layoffs, the states say.
The states say the terminations have left them with an abrupt influx in unemployment claims and higher demand for social services.
The Trump administration says that federal agencies can terminate probationary workers for virtually any reason. OPM said in February the probationary period "is a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment."
The lawsuit before Alsup was filed by unions, nonprofit groups and the state of Washington. They claim the mass firings were unlawful because they were ordered by OPM rather than left to the discretion of individual agencies.
The plaintiffs include the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers. The union's president, Everett Kelley, said in a statement Alsup's decision was an important victory against "an administration hellbent on crippling federal agencies and their work on behalf of the American public."
Alsup last month had temporarily blocked OPM from ordering agencies to fire probationary employees, but declined at the time to require that fired workers get their jobs back. The plaintiffs subsequently amended their lawsuit to include the agencies that fired probationary workers.
The Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews federal employees' appeals when they are fired, earlier this month ordered the Agriculture Department to reinstate nearly 6,000 probationary workers at least temporarily.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, Nate Raymond in Boston and Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Alistair Bell, David Bario, David Gregorio and Tom Hogue)
