Case: U.S. Office of Special Counsel, ex rel. v. Department of Agriculture

This case record documents the administrative challenge by the Office of Special Counsel to the Trump Administration's mass firing of probationary federal employees.

The federal head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), Hampton Dellinger, filed a petition on February 28, 2025, with the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), complaining that the USDA’s firings of more than 5,000 probationary employees violated civil-service protections. He asked the MSPB to issue a stay order that would reverse the firings for 45 days.

Specifically, he said, probationary employees may usually be terminated only if their specific, individual performance or conduct demonstrates that they are unfit for federal employment."  The Trump administration, however, terminated employees en masse because, it decided, their jobs were not “mission-critical.”  At the same time, USDA (like other agencies) falsely stated in termination letters to the employees that the firings were “based on your performance.” 

The MSPB's chairman, Cathy Harris, ordered OSC to provide additional information to facilitate the MSPB's review, including the names of 29 complainants described, and also of all the other affected individuals. The order specified, "If OSC is unable to provide the names of any of these individuals, it must explain why it cannot provide those names" and "shall brief the Board’s authority to grant its request to stay the terminations as a group without the names of the affected individuals."  The requested information/briefing was due March 4, 2025.  

On March 5, the MSPB granted the requested 45-day stay.  An opinion by Chairman Cathy Harris explained the "deference that must be afforded to OSC at this initial stage," and found reasonable grounds to believe that the agency engaged in a prohibited personnel practice under 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(12). The order applied not just to John Doe but to thousands of other USDA employees who had been treated similarly--fired during their probationary period after Feb. 13, 2025, via letters stating, “The [a]gency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the [a]gency would be in the public interest.” Each one was to be placed back in the positions that they held prior to the probationary terminations  

The Office of Special Counsel is an independent executive agency authorized to investigate whistleblower complaints and to protect federal workers from prohibited personnel practices. President Trump had on Feb. 7, 2025, tried to fire Dellinger, but this was reversed by the district court, first with an administrative stay, then with a Temporary Restraining Order, and then with a full judgment entered March 1, 2025.  (The Supreme Court had declined (5-4) to intercede in the provisional judgment.) The final judgment was on appeal; the full case is described here. Likewise, the MSPB is an independent executive agency assigned to protect federal workers from prohibited personnel practices; the President also attempted to fire several of its members, and that attempt was also reversed by the district court, whose decision was then appealed by the administration.  The full case is described here.