With judge’s restraining order, DOE staffers being reinstated

The Department of Energy and its Office of Environmental Management is rehiring many probationary employees laid off in recent government downsizing by the Donald Trump administration, sources said this week.

DOE and Environmental Management did not immediately reply to an email Friday morning seeking confirmation and no hard numbers were available. The workers are being reinstated after a Maryland-based federal judge’s order that grew out of a lawsuit by several state attorneys general.

The much-publicized temporary restraining order covers more than a dozen government agencies including DOE, the Department of Interior, Department of Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency. The temporary restraining order by U.S. District Judge James Bredar is aimed at workers let go since Jan. 20 as part of a “mass termination.” The order excludes those “actually terminated on the basis of a good-faith, individualized determination of cause.”

A hearing on a follow-up preliminary injunction is slated for Wednesday March 26 in Baltimore.

In the lawsuit New York Attorney General Letitia James and other attorneys general argued the White House did not follow the law in terminating probationary employees, who were either recently hired or promoted. The administration is supposed to provide civil servants with at least 60-days-notice when they are being terminated as part of a mass reduction-in-force, according to the suit.