A U.S. agency on Tuesday halted the terminations of six federal government employees who U.S. President Donald Trump's administration targeted in its mass firings of probationary workers.
The Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent agency that hears appeals by government employees when they are fired or disciplined, issued the decision at the behest of a watchdog agency whose leader's removal by Trump has been stalled by the courts.
While the decision to stay the six employees' terminations for 45 days only applies to a handful of the thousands of probationary federal employees recently fired, their lawyers said they hoped to expand the order to cover others.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The decision came at the request of Hampton Dellinger, the head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which protects federal employees from being punished for whistle-blowing and other practices.
Dellinger, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, on Friday filed requests to pause the terminations of the six probationary employees, saying there were grounds to believe the agencies that employed them acted unlawfully by firing them.
Trump has sought to remove Dellinger from office and had likewise fired the Democratic chair of the board, Cathy Harris. But courts for now have blocked their removals, allowing them to remain in office.
Dellinger argued the agencies misused the employees' probationary status to carry out de facto reductions-in-force without following the laws and regulations that govern when agencies carry out large-scale workforce reductions.
In Tuesday's decision, Ray Limon, the board's other Democratic member, agreed, saying that there were "reasonable grounds to believe that each of the six agencies engaged in a prohibited personnel practice."
Dellinger in a statement welcomed the ruling. He said his office "will continue to pursue allegations of unlawful personnel actions, which can include asking MSPB for relief for a broader group of fired probationary employees."
Lawyers for the employees at liberal legal group Democracy Forward noted that their complaint requested that Dellinger's office seek relief on behalf of all similarly situated probationary employees. They supplemented the complaint last week to add additional agencies.
