The administration of US President Donald Trump will begin to reinstate approximately 25,000 federal employees who were dismissed after judges determined their terminations were unlawful, according to court filings.
Officials from 18 different departments and agencies have provided documentation to a federal court outlining their attempts to rehire the terminated probationary employees to adhere to the court’s directives.
Recently, two federal judges ruled that the mass dismissals of these newly hired employees were illegal and instructed that they be reinstated while further litigation is ongoing. These firings were part of Trump’s move to reduce the size of the federal workforce, aided by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).
The documents submitted to a Baltimore federal court on Monday provide a more comprehensive overview of the extent of layoffs throughout the federal government.
They show that 7,600 individuals were dismissed from the Treasury Department, 5,700 from the Department of Agriculture, over 3,200 from the Department of Health and Human Services, and hundreds from various other departments and agencies.
Many being reinstated will not return to active duty immediately; instead, they will be placed on administrative leave. This decision followed a lawsuit filed by 19 states led by Democrats and Washington DC, which contended that mass layoffs would elevate unemployment claims and increase stress on social services.
In a subsequent response to the government’s measures to reinstate the workers, the judge commented that the agencies had made significant progress towards compliance.
These are not the only judicial decisions opposing the US government’s attempts to decrease the size of the federal bureaucracy. On Tuesday, a federal judge prohibited the Trump administration from taking any further actions to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
