Exclusive: ACLU asks Congress to investigate plans to fire 'probationary' federal employees
Source: The Hill
02/07/25 2:28 PM ET
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is asking Congress to investigate the Trump administration’s plans for “imminent mass layoffs” of as many as 200,000 employees hired within the last two years ago. The letter comes as departments across government have been asked to assemble a list of employees still on probation after being hired. The probationary period lasts one or two years, depending on the agency.
The ACLU said Trump administration officials have “repeatedly made clear that they intend to reshape the federal workforce for their own partisan political purposes.” “We respectfully urge that you investigate the Administration’s rationale and legal basis for these planned layoffs. … Mass layoffs of federal employees of the sort that have been reported to be under consideration are presumptively and inherently illegal,” the ACLU wrote to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The ACLU argues the law requires reviewing each employee’s performance on a case-by-case basis, while any large-scale firings would have to follow existing law for shrinking the workforce. Despite their probationary status, the employees are still afforded much of the same protections as the broader federal workforce, meaning they must be informed of “inadequacies” in their performance before being fired.
“While the law allows for the termination of probationary employees for performance or conduct reasons, a mass firing on this scale without any sort of individualized assessment or following of Reduction in Force (RIF) procedures raises serious legal concerns,” the ACLU wrote to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Read more: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5133248-acolu-letter-congress-trump-administration/