The American Federation of Government Employees filed suit on behalf of potentially hundreds of thousands of people who faced immediate termination.
Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California ruled the memo, which was emailed to departments on Jan. 20 and Feb. 14th, "illegal" and that it "should be stopped, rescinded."
"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 within another agency," Alsup said Thursday night. "It can hire its own employees, yes. Can fire them. But it cannot order or direct some other agency to do so.
"OPM has no authority to tell any agency in the United States government, other than itself, who they can hire and who they can fire, period. So on the merits, I think, we start with that important proposition," he said.
The order does not reinstate employees who have already been terminated.
"This ruling by Judge Alsup is an important initial victory for patriotic Americans across this country who were illegally fired from their jobs by an agency that had no authority to do so," said Everett Kelley, National President of the American Federation of Government Employees. "These are rank-and-file workers who joined the federal government to make a difference in their communities, only to be suddenly terminated due to this administration's disdain for federal employees and desire to privatize their work."
Alsup directed the OPM to inform the Department of Defense on Friday to act on the memo. The firings would have touched the Veterans Affairs Department, the National Park Service, the Small Business Administration, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense and other agencies, according to NPR.
He went on to say that probationary employees, which have largely been the target of the layoffs, are the "lifeblood" of the U.S. government, adding that they enter at low levels of employment and work their way up.
"And that's how we renew ourselves and reinvent ourselves," Alsup said.
Danielle Leonard, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the Trump administration's bold move to fire thousands of federal employees is the first time in U.S. history that federal employees can be fired at will.
"That is not the law, your Honor. Probationary employees and agencies do have obligations before firing probationary employees," Leonard said in his testimony to the court. "The government should not operate in secrecy when it comes to wholesale orders to fire so many people."
At will employment is commonplace in the private sector and even in some state and local governments. Federal employment has long been considered a safe haven from quick termination and sought after for job security. Trump's sweeping layoffs of federal employees with no notice is a major departure.
Cuts and layoffs have been the hallmark of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, a quasi governmental organization crafted by Trump, who has given unbridled authority to Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to investigate fraud and waste in the federal government. Musk is not a federal employee, nor is he officially the head of DOGE.
It's not clear how many people would have been affected by the orders in the memo, but data from the OPM suggest that it could have been hundreds of thousands of people.
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