A constitutional crisis continues to brew after a federal appeals court rejected an effort by the Trump administration to pause a judge’s ruling that thousands of fired federal employees were to be reinstated.
On Wednesday night, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco refused to stay Clinton-appointed Judge William Alsup’s preliminary injunction forbidding the administration from terminating the employment of probationary government workers, another blow to the credibility of the federal judiciary, which has been hijacked by activists in robes.
Alsup ordered the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs to “immediately” offer all terminated employees their jobs back in his March 13 injunction.
“Appellants have demonstrated neither that they are sufficiently likely to succeed on the merits of this appeal nor that they will suffer irreparable harm from complying with the preliminary injunction,” read the majority opinion, which was obtained by the New York Post.
In a 2-1 ruling, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused the administration’s bid to stay US District Judge William Alsup’s March 13 preliminary injunction, which ordered the departments to offer all probationary employees terminated on or about Feb. 13 their jobs back.
The Democrat judges said that the administration didn’t demonstrate “a likelihood that the district court clearly erred in finding that the six agencies were directed by the United States Office of Personnel Management to fire probationary employees,” violating federal laws dictating reduction in force procedures.
The judges also found that the federal worker labor union plaintiffs “provided evidence of various concrete injuries, and the district court carefully analyzed that evidence and determined that it was sufficient.”
In her dissent, Bade said that the unions “have not met their burden of showing that they have standing, and thus the government is likely to prevail on the merits because the district court did not have jurisdiction to enter the preliminary injunction.”
The lone Republican appointee argued that Alsup’s might not actually “redress” the alleged harms suffered by the lawsuit’s plaintiffs.
“Reinstating the terminated employees does not mean that they will return to the same positions and assignments, or that the agencies will provide the services that the organizational plaintiffs desire,” she wrote, according to the Post. ”It is just as likely that the various agencies will reassign these employees to new positions, or assign them different tasks, or prioritize their mission and services in a manner that does not result in increased services to the organizational plaintiffs, or even lawfully terminate the employees.”
“Further, it is not clear the district court has the authority to direct lawful personnel management decisions within the agencies,” Bade added.
The ruling is yet another blow to the Trump administration which has seen its mandate to conduct sweeping reforms of government waste and fraud undercut by lower court judges who have been firing off a barrage of temporary restraining orders and injunctions on a near daily basis while the Supreme Court sits on its hands, eroding public faith in the judiciary by its inaction.
The White House slammed Alsup’s initial ruling, arguing that the San Francisco-based judge was 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,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier this month, blasting Alsup’s ruling.
“If a federal district court judge would like executive powers, they can try and run for President themselves,” Leavitt added.
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