A United States judge on Thursday denied a union’s request to temporarily halt the firing of thousands of federal employees on probationary status, marking another legal victory for President Donald Trump in his efforts to reduce the government workforce.
District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that he lacked jurisdiction to address the complaint, one of several lawsuits filed recently to stop the mass layoffs. The decision comes as approximately 6,700 probationary workers at the Internal Revenue Service, which employs around 100,000 people, are being dismissed.
A former IRS probationary officer, who was laid off on Thursday, shared her experience with AFP on condition of anonymity. She revealed that she and her colleagues had been warned to cancel any trips before receiving an email instructing them to report to the office with their government-issued IDs and laptops.
The mother of two, in her 40s, described the layoffs as life-altering.
“This has just completely turned people’s lives upside down. There’s zero empathy. Maybe they don’t really care about this, and they only care about the mission of cost-cutting and such,” she said.
She added that the affected employees had not received any severance pay and were now facing significant financial challenges.
“How are we going to deal with, for instance, our mortgage and then health insurance?” she asked.
Most of the employees being let go were part of the IRS’s enforcement teams, less than two months before the US income tax filing deadline of April 15, according to a former IRS official.
The National Treasury Employees Union and four other unions representing federal employees had asked Judge Cooper to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the termination of their probationary members. However, Cooper, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, ruled that the court lacked jurisdiction over the matter. He suggested that the unions instead bring their claims before the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which adjudicates federal labor disputes.
Another probationary worker, who spoke to AFP anonymously to discuss his former employer freely, said that IRS managers were caught off guard by the layoffs.
“I think DOGE has been very careful to make it seem like the agencies themselves are making the decisions, when I can tell, our managers yesterday were just as shocked as we were,” he said.
The Department of Government Efficiency, a free-ranging entity led by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a top Trump ally and donor, is overseeing the layoffs.
The laid-off IRS worker described the mood at the agency as somber.
“Staff at my agency were a little resigned, a little defeated, including our managers… some of them were, seemed like they were on the verge of tears,” he said.
He had been a revenue agent on a team responsible for overseeing tax collection from corporations and wealthy individuals.
“I think Republicans have really kind of twisted the narrative in the press to say that the IRS has hired a bunch of people to go after middle- or working-class folks, when really a lot of the people that were hired were hired to go after large corporations and high net worth individuals,” he added.
The judge’s decision follows a similar ruling on Wednesday, when another federal judge declined to block DOGE from firing federal employees. Fourteen Democratic-ruled states had filed a lawsuit last week challenging Musk’s legal authority, but District Judge Tanya Chutkan denied their emergency request to pause his actions.
Musk’s cost-cutting measures have faced legal challenges and mixed rulings. Last week, a judge lifted a temporary freeze on a mass buyout plan offered by the Trump administration to federal workers. According to the White House, more than 75,000 federal employees accepted the buyout offer from the Office of Personnel Management.
The fired IRS worker expressed frustration with the situation, describing it as “cruel.”
“For all of this to happen in such a cruel fashion, just it doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.
The layoffs have sparked widespread criticism, with affected employees and unions decrying the lack of empathy and financial support for those losing their jobs. As the legal battles continue, the future remains uncertain for thousands of federal workers caught in the crossfire of the Trump administration’s workforce reduction efforts.
