(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court for an emergency stay of a district court judge’s order that 16,000 terminated federal probationary employees across six agencies and departments be immediately reinstated.
The request is the latest challenge to a nationwide preliminary injunction issued by a federal district court judge in response to Trump’s executive actions reshaping the government.
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris argues in the filing that the labor unions and nonprofit groups that challenged the mass firings lack standing, saying they have “hijacked the employment relationship between the federal government and its workforce.”
She claims the judge’s order also violates separation of powers.
“This Court should not allow a single district court to erase Congress’s handiwork and seize control over reviewing federal personnel decisions — much less do so by vastly exceeding the limits on the scope of its equitable authority and ordering reinstatements en masse,” Harris wrote.
Harris said the executive Office of Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board are the proper venues for plaintiffs challenging their terminations.
The Supreme Court is already weighing the administration’s request for emergency relief in three cases over Trump’s executive order ending Birthright Citizenship.
Disputes over the Alien Enemies Act and over the dissolution of U.S. Agency for International Development and freezing of aid payouts are also likely bound for the high court in the coming weeks and months.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement when the district court judge ruled earlier this month that it was a single judge “attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch.”
“The President has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch — singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the President’s agenda,” Leavitt added in the statement posted on X by her deputy.
Leavitt added the administration will “immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order.”
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