A federal judge ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to rehire thousands of federal employees fired from six agencies, ruling Thursday that the terminations were carried out unlawfully by a government personnel office overseen by a Georgia bureaucrat.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs to reinstate the employees fired in mid-February. Charles Ezell, the acting manager of the government’s human relations arm, provided the agencies with instructions on how to handle the terminations.
Ezell was a low-level data analyst from Middle Georgia until a Trump adviser offered him the job a few weeks ago as acting director of the Office of Personnel Management. He was ordered to testify at Thursday’s hearing, but his attorneys said he would not appear.
Ezell’s department sent detailed guidance to federal agencies outlining steps to fire an estimated 200,000 federal probationary workers, triggering a legal challenge contending that Ezell’s guidance was an “insidious” move to gut the federal workforce.
Ezell had insisted that his agency wasn’t directly hiring or firing employees but was merely offering “guidance.” However, Alsup ruled that OPM actively encouraged agency heads to dismiss probationary workers by citing poor performance — regardless of their actual records.
“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,” Alsup said in his ruling from the bench. “That should not have been done in our country.”
Alsup also directed the agencies to produce lists of probationary employees within seven days and extended a restraining order that blocks the OPM from carrying out any further mass firings.
The White House and OPM officials didn’t immediately comment on the ruling. Ezell, too, has declined requests seeking details over how he vaulted from a low-profile job at the agency’s Macon office to the center of Trump’s administration.
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