Trump administration rehiring nearly 25,000 fired workers after court order

Donald Trump’s presidential administration in court filings has for the first time acknowledged that it fired nearly 25,000 recently hired workers – and said agencies were working to bring all of them back after a judge ruled that their terminations were likely illegal.

The filings made in Baltimore’s federal courthouse late Monday include statements from officials at 18 agencies, all of whom said the reinstated probationary workers were being placed on administrative leave at least temporarily.

The mass firings, part of Trump’s broader purge of the federal workforce carried out by the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) led by billionaire businessman Elon Musk, were widely reported. But the court filings are the first full accounting of the terminations by the administration.

Most of the agencies said they had fired a few hundred workers. The treasury department terminated about 7,600 people, the Department of Agriculture about 5,700 and the Department of Health and Human Services more than 3,200, according to the filings.

The US district judge James Bredar on 13 March said the mass firings of probationary workers that began in February violated regulations governing the mass layoffs of federal employees – and ordered them to be reinstated pending further litigation.

Probationary workers typically have less than one year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees.

Bredar’s ruling came in a lawsuit by 19 Democratic-led states and Washington DC, who said the mass firings would trigger a spike in unemployment claims and greater demand for social services provided by states.

The office of Maryland attorney general Anthony Brown, which is spearheading the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

The Trump administration has appealed Bredar’s decision and on Monday asked an appeals court based in Richmond, Virginia, to pause the ruling pending the outcome of the case.

Hours before Bredar issued his ruling, a federal judge in San Francisco had ordered that probationary workers be reinstated at six agencies, including five also covered by Bredar’s order and the US defense department. The administration has also appealed that decision.

In the filings late Monday, agency officials said they had either reinstated all of the fired employees or were working to do so – but warned that bringing back large numbers of workers had imposed significant burdens and caused confusion and turmoil.

The officials also noted that an appeals court ruling reversing Bredar’s order would allow agencies to again fire the workers, subjecting them to multiple changes in their employment status in a matter of weeks.

“The tremendous uncertainty associated with this confusion and these administrative burdens impede supervisors from appropriately managing their workforce,” Mark Green, the deputy assistant secretary at the US department of the interior, wrote in one of the filings. “Work schedules and assignments are effectively being tied to hearing and briefing schedules set by the courts.”

Bredar has scheduled a hearing for 26 March on whether to keep his ruling in place pending the outcome of the lawsuit, which could take months or longer to resolve.