The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to halt a lower court ruling that required six federal departments and agencies to reinstate more than 16,000 federal probationary employees it had fired.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit last week rejected a Trump administration request for an immediate halt to the district court order, with the appellate court saying a pausing of the order would disrupt the status quo.
In an application to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department said the district court had overstepped its authority. And they argue the judge erred when he issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed not by the workers themselves, but by groups “who claimed that these layoffs could contribute to downstream harms from less-robust governmental service.”
