It once fought the layoffs - then it reversed course, and the courthouse door shut
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from two fired probationary workers who wanted a federal watchdog ordered to reopen investigations into their terminations.
The August 24 decision touches a question many HR leaders have watched since early 2025: what can probationary employees do when their jobs vanish in a mass cut?
The two workers held probationary posts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Administration for Children and Families. In February 2025, both received termination notices, part of what the court described as a government-wide effort to cut thousands of probationary staff. They complained to the Office of Special Counsel, the agency Congress created to protect federal employees from abuse.
At first, the Office pushed back. Under its then-head, it asked the Merit Systems Protection Board to pause the layoffs, calling them unlawful reductions in force that skipped required steps. The Board agreed in one case, then paused more than 5,000 probationary terminations.
Then the leadership changed. President Trump removed the Office's head and installed a new acting head. On April 8, 2025, the Office issued a directive reversing course, telling staff to close the probationary investigations because the terminations were not prohibited personnel practices. The workers received closure notices citing their probationary status.
They sued, asking the court to vacate the directive and force the Office to reinvestigate. The court refused, but not on the merits. It ruled that the workers lacked standing, the legal right to bring a case in federal court.
The court accepted that losing a job is a real injury. But it found the closed investigations were not something a court could fix. Deciding what to investigate, it reasoned, sits at the core of executive power, and courts generally cannot order an agency to open or reopen a case.
An order to reinvestigate would not guarantee a different result either. The agency could still decline to act, as it had after the reversal. Any real remedy would also depend on the Merit Systems Protection Board, which was not part of the suit, choosing to act. The court called that chain of possibilities too speculative to keep the case alive.
For employers, the decision maps the narrow ground probationary employees stand on. They can be let go summarily, and the routes to challenge those exits are limited. The court did not decide whether the terminations were lawful. It decided only that this path to review was closed, leaving the federal workforce cuts in place.
