The following is a report from SFGATE.
A federal judge in San Francisco has ordered the National Park Service and five other federal agencies to immediately reinstate probationary employees who were fired en masse last month, ruling that the Office of Personnel Management had no legal authority to mandate their terminations.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup, in a scathing rebuke of the Donald Trump administration’s actions, declared the mass firings a violation of federal law and accused officials of using procedural loopholes to sidestep legal protections. In addition to 1,000 employees who were terminated from the park service, his order affects employees at the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury, who were abruptly dismissed in February.
“It is a sad, 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 from the bench. “That should not have been done in our country. It was a sham in order to avoid statutory requirements.”
The judge made clear that while federal agencies can conduct layoffs, they must follow legally defined “reduction-in-force” procedures. He accused the Office of Personnel Management of orchestrating an unlawful workaround by directing departments to fire workers without due process.
As part of his ruling, Alsup barred the office from issuing any further guidance on employee terminations and ordered federal agencies to report back on their compliance with the reinstatement order. He also authorized depositions and further hearings to determine whether existing administrative appeal channels remain viable — or if they have been dismantled.
For park service employees, the ruling represents a hard-won victory, albeit a tenuous one.
“Today’s ruling by Judge Alsup is an important win for National Park Service employees who were wrongfully terminated,” Phil Francis, chair of the Executive Council of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, said in a statement provided to SFGATE by Don Neubacher, former superintendent of Yosemite National Park. “These probationary employees must now be reinstated immediately and can return to the important business of protecting the irreplaceable resources and stories found at over 430 units of the National Park System. We know there are more fights ahead as we work to protect parks and federal employees but today, we celebrate this ruling.”
Click here to read the full report by Olivia Hebert at SFGATE.
