Thousands of Agriculture Department employees who were fired last month must be reinstated in their old positions for at least 45 days, a board that handles federal worker disputes ordered on Wednesday.
The fired employees were on probationary status and relatively new in their positions, swept up in the Trump administration’s push to rapidly reduce the size of the federal work force in part by targeting those types of workers. Probationary employees have fewer Civil Service protections than other government workers who have been in their jobs longer, and have been seen by President Trump and Elon Musk, the tech billionaire leading the downsizing effort, as the easiest to fire.
Even so, there are rules that agencies must follow when firing probationary employees, including a requirement that managers document details when alleging poor performance.
Cathy Harris, the chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board, the administrative body where employees can appeal adverse actions, said in her order on Wednesday that she had “reasonable grounds” to believe that agencies that had fired probationary workers violated a law that dictates proper personnel practices.
Currently, the board’s decision applies only to probationary employees at the Agriculture Department who were fired on Feb. 13, estimated to be 5,000 to 6,000 people.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The order signals that the board could rule in favor of other fired probationary employees if the Office of Special Counsel, which brought the Agriculture Department case forward, produces similar evidence that other agencies violated personnel laws as well.
“Based on the evidence I’ve seen so far, there is nothing unique or singular or atypical about the firing of the U.S.D.A. employees,” the special counsel, Hampton Dellinger, said in an interview with The New York Times.
Fired employees took their case to Mr. Dellinger’s office, an independent agency within the government that investigates whistle-blower complaints and allegations of wrongful dismissal. Mr. Dellinger brought the case of the Agriculture Department terminations to the Merit Systems Protection Board and asked the board to pause the firings so that he could further investigate what had happened.
As Mr. Dellinger and Ms. Harris scrutinize and wind back some aspects of Mr. Trump’s mass firings, they are fighting to keep their own positions. Mr. Trump fired them both, and after successfully challenging the decisions in federal court they were temporarily reinstated. The Trump administration is appealing judges’ orders that they be allowed to keep their jobs.
Later on Wednesday, a panel of appellate judges lifted the pause on Mr. Dellinger’s firing and effectively sidelined him until the appeals court can hear the case and make a decision. It was not immediately clear what this meant for the continuation of the investigations he was pursuing.
Agencies interpreted Mr. Trump’s order guiding the implementation of Elon Musk’s government-gutting initiative as a directive to fire probationary employees, who have mostly been in their jobs for less than one year. As a result, more than 20,000 probationary workers, including veterans, were fired, according to a Times count.
The merit board’s order bodes well for fired probationary employees from other agencies that the Office of Special Counsel is investigating, said Michelle Bercovici, a lawyer with the Alden Law Group, which initially filed a complaint about the firings to the office on Feb. 14.
Jacob Bushno of Illinois was among the Agriculture Department employees fired last month, even though he had received a positive work evaluation and had only seven days left until he would have been in his position with the Forest Service for a year.
Mr. Bushno reached out to his former supervisor on Wednesday after he learned about the board’s order. He said his former supervisor had no information about the order or what would happen next.
The Trump administration’s targeting of probationary employees in its job-cutting pursuits was going after “low-hanging fruit,” said Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that works to promote excellence and best practices in the federal government.
“They’ve done it in a clumsy way,” Mr. Stier said on Wednesday. “And therefore they’ve made a lot of mistakes.”
