Nearly 25,000 fired employees rehired in the past week, federal HR officials tell court

The probationary employee firings upended services and lives across the country. Also: Four states are seeking to carry out executions this week.

U.S. District Judge James Bredar — a federal judge in Baltimore — didn’t get the headlines that his colleague in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge William Alsup, got as the pair of judges hear cases challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to fire federal employees.

But, as seen in 18 declarations filed in federal court in Baltimore on Monday, Bredar is getting results — with nearly 25,000 fired probationary employees having had their firings rescinded in the past week, many on Monday as Bredar’s 1 p.m. deadline for action hit.

The two senior status federal judges — Bredar an Obama appointee and Alsup a Clinton appointee — are hearing cases challenging the Office of Personnel Management’s memorandum to federal agencies to fire probationary employees. “Probationary employees,” to be clear is simply a status of new employees — and even promoted or otherwise moved employees — and it can last for a year or even two, depending on the role. The resulting firings across the federal government, many on Valentine’s Day, dramatically impacted thousands and thousands of employees and upended services essential to Americans — and people across the globe.

Alsup, hearing a challenge brought by unions and organizations affected by the cuts, got attention for his statements in court calling a declaration submitted by the government in the case a “sham” and, more broadly, for his willingness to challenge the Justice Department’s lawyer, Kelsey Helland, for his statements in court and those made by the Trump administration clients whose actions Helland was defending.

That is important. DOJ lawyers and government officials must be held to account for their actions.

Thus far, though, Alsup’s preliminary injunction only required action — as made clear in his stay request denial — from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Interior, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Treasury Department. Alsup also has not set deadlines for action from the federal government in response to his order, only requiring further briefing by noon Friday.

Then, there is Bredar, who is hearing a challenge brought by 19 states and D.C., led by Maryland. Filed a few weeks after the California case, Bredar issued a temporary restraining order, with a memorandum opinion, in the Maryland case on March 13.

He was specific.

There were deadlines.

And he ordered to see their work.

He did give an extension to the government until 7 p.m. Monday to file their status report, but that extension didn’t change the 1 p.m. deadline for compliance.

When DOJ filed its status report, Bredar — and the public — was provided with significant information about what the Trump administration is doing in our names — and how agencies are able to work quickly if ordered to do so.

Declarations were filed, under penalty of perjury, from senior human resource officials at — in order of the declarations — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, United States Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Commerce, Department of Homeland Security, United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Education, Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Labor, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Small Business Administration, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, United States Agency for International Development, General Services Administration, Department of Treasury, United States Department of Agriculture, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Department of Health and Human Services.

Per their declarations, the federal government has rescinded the firing of more than 24,000 employees in the past week — almost all since Bredar’s March 13 temporary restraining order. (The one major exception is the USDA, which noted that it was already returning its 5,714 probationary employees pursuant to “a 45-day March 5, 2025, Stay Order issued by the Merit Systems Protection Board.” Even there, though, Bredar’s order could provide further protection for those employees because the MSPB move had been requested by the now-fired head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger.) Many of the declarations specifically note that the rehired employees will be getting back pay, in addition to ongoing pay and benefits.

Now, I don’t want to pretend this is all great news.

The Justice Department is appealing Bredar’s order, and the declarations almost all noted in clearly suggested or provided — although not apparently required — language how “reinstatement … would impose substantial burdens on [the agency], cause significant confusion, and cause turmoil for the terminated employees” and that “an appellate ruling could reverse the district court’s order shortly after terminated employees have been reinstated via administrative leave or have returned to full duty status.” As such, most of the declarations state, “In short, employees could be subjected to multiple changes in their employment status in a matter of weeks.“

Additionally, and something already noted by Alsup, is the fact that — while some of the declarations discuss the employees being brought back into active service — many of the agencies appear solely, for now, to be committing to rehiring the fired probationary employees and putting them on paid administrative leave. (I should note, though, that some of those declarations appear to suggest that is a temporary move while rehiring processes can be completed and the employees can be brought back into full service.)

Regardless, and while it is not a solution for the long term, Bredar’s order provided some quick, albeit temporary, protections for these nearly 25,000 federal employees who were fired for no reason — and many with no notice.

Additionally, and importantly, Bredar’s actions led to some much-needed transparency across a wide swath of the federal government into the scope of the Trump administration’s directed probationary employee firings.

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Scheduled executions

Over the next three days, four states are aiming to kill four people.

On Tuesday, Louisiana is scheduled to execute Jessie Hoffman — in spite of a district court injunction covered here at Law Dork that raised serious questions about whether the state had rushed the process so that Hoffman has not been able to properly challenge the state’s new method of execution: suffocation by nitrogen gas. The execution is back on again after Judge James Ho, joined by Judge Andy Oldham, vacated the district court injunction. The two men, both Trump appointees, are among the furthest right of all of the judges on the far-right U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. As if to prove that point, Judge Catharina Haynes, a George W. Bush appointee, dissented.

Now, Hoffman’s case is in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. If they allow the execution to go forward — which is extremely likely — this is on Ho and Oldham if anything goes wrong in the state’s first nitrogen gas execution and first execution at all since 2010.

[Update: The Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, refused to stop Jessie Hoffman’s execution. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have issued a stay of execution. Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented, raising questions about Hoffman’s religion claim, and also would have granted a stay of execution.]

On Wednesday, Arizona is scheduled to execute Aaron Gunches. Although Gunches has sought his own execution, Arizona had halted executions during a review Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, ordered when she took office in 2023. Gunches’s execution did not go forward then, but, as Bolts reported on Monday, that changed in recent months — after Donald Trump’s election this past fall — and now Gunches’s execution is likely to take place Wednesday.

If the execution proceeds, it will be the first execution overseen by a Democratic administration since then-governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe oversaw the final execution of his time in office in July 2017. Like Louisiana, Arizona does not have much recent experience with executions. Aside from three troubling executions carried out in 2022, Arizona had not carried out any executions since 2014 — when Arizona horribly botched the execution of Joseph Wood.

On Thursday, Oklahoma is set to execute Wendell Grissom and Florida is looking to execute Edward Thomas James. It would be Oklahoma’s first execution this year, and Florida’s second. Currently, James has two requests before the Supreme Court — one related to how Florida courts have considered the fact that he was sentenced to death by a nonunanimous jury (an 11-1 recommendation from the jury ended with the judge sentencing him to death) and the other related to how federal courts have considered a claim of mental incapacity.