Twenty Democratic attorneys general have sued the Trump administration in federal court and filed for a temporary restraining order against nearly two dozen federal agencies, arguing that the mass layoffs of thousands of federal probationary employees in recent weeks were conducted illegally.
Under federal laws and regulations, if the government terminates probationary employees en masse for reasons unrelated to performance, agencies must follow “Reductions in Force” guidelines. Those include additional job protections for military veterans and at least a 60-day notification to affected states so local officials can set up rapid response teams to support a surge of unemployed residents.
“President Trump’s unlawful mass firings of federal workers are a blatant attack on the civil service, throwing thousands of hardworking families into financial turmoil,” Brown said. “We won’t stand by while he disrupts lives and undermines our State.”
The Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
The other states joining the lawsuit include Minnesota, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin, as well as the District of Columbia.
In Maryland, more than 800 former federal employees have applied for unemployment benefits since Trump took office, according to data from the state’s Labor Department. During the same time period last year, Maryland received 189 unemployment claims from federal workers.
But states’ abilities to process those unemployment claims has been complicated by what the lawsuit claims is a messy, inconsistent and non-transparent firing process — one further exacerbated, the states allege, by the potential illegality of the probationary worker terminations.
When the nature of a termination is in dispute, including whether it was for individual performance or general workforce reduction reasons, officials who review unemployment applications and administer benefits must conduct an independent investigation to determine whether the worker is eligible for relief.
In Illinois, state officials “remain unaware of the individuals who have already been laid off and whether and when the next federal mass layoff event will occur,” the lawsuit says.
Because of that, the lawsuit claims, state officials had to rush to stand up a website for resource and job information that is generic and therefore less helpful to fired workers.
Maryland’s comptroller has predicted that the mass firings will cause significant decreases to the state’s income tax revenue and otherwise harm the economy.
In a statement Friday, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) said the “draconian actions” of the Trump administration could cause “tens of thousands of jobs lost, hundreds of thousands of lives disrupted, and the cratering of tens of millions of dollars in income here in Maryland” — at a time when the state is already grappling with an estimated $3.2 billion budget deficit.
In the nation’s capital, District officials have estimated that the city could also face substantial losses in annual sales tax revenue generated by federal employees who live, work and buy goods and services in the region, according to the lawsuit.
The suit argues that these losses could have been mitigated had the Trump administration given the District and the fired probationary employees the proper 60-day notice, because they may have been able to secure new jobs before their paychecks abruptly stopped.
A few weeks later, the employees were rehired.
The request for a temporary restraining order seeks to force the Trump administration to give a clearer picture of the impacts, asking a judge to require the federal agencies targeted in the lawsuit to file a status report with the court that identifies all federal employees terminated since Jan. 20.
