WASHINGTON ― More than 5,000 employees who were fired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture are getting their jobs back, at least for now, after a government employee oversight board decided Wednesday they were illegally terminated.
The Merit Systems Protection Board, a panel charged with protecting federal merit systems against partisan or political abuse, announced it is broadening its previous decision that restored the jobs of six federal employees to all USDA employees who were similarly and haphazardly fired by the Trump administration. All of these federal staffers are probationary employees, or people who have generally been in their jobs for a year or less.
The decision means thousands of USDA workers who were unlawfully fired can return to their jobs. It also strengthens the case being made by legal groups like Democracy Forward, which brought this request before the board, that none of the mass firings being carried out by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency have been legal.
“The Merit Systems Protection Board has again confirmed that the Trump-Vance administration’s firing of tens of thousands of hard-working federal employees is unlawful,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement.
“We are gratified that this unlawful action has been stayed for USDA employees, and we remain committed to ensuring the tens of thousands of other civil servants receive this same reprieve,” Perryman said. “This is about protecting the people who work for the American people. It’s about fairness, stability, and the rule of law. That means protecting the non-partisan civil service from an Administration bent on creating chaos and uncertainty.”
The board decision, which is here, requires USDA to temporarily restore these thousands of jobs through April 18, 2025. During that time, the federal Office of Special Counsel, an investigatory office that works with the merit board, will continue looking into the legality of the firings.
A USDA spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wednesday’s decision is the latest legal defeat for the Trump administration as it moves aggressively to try to hollow out the federal government. In addition to being directed by the Merit Systems Protection Board ― twice ― to restore various employees’ jobs, a federal judge ruled last week that the Office of Personnel Management had no authority to direct federal agencies to fire people and that it was probably illegal.
That led to Trump’s OPM on Tuesday abruptly walking back its directive to agencies to fire thousands of probationary employees. Now, in its effort to avoid more lawsuits, OPM is rewriting history and claiming it’s been up to individual agencies all along to decide to fire people, not OPM. It’s the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration knows that what it’s been doing is illegal.
“Our civil service protections exist for a reason—to prevent politically motivated purges that undermine the integrity of our government,” said Rob Shriver of Democracy Forward’s Civil Service Strong, its public resource center.
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“This decision affirms that impacted USDA employees should be judged based on their own job performance and not on the perceptions and biases of an unelected billionaire, and we will continue working until this decision is rightly expanded to cover all civil servants,” he said.