Trump has named Paul Ingrassia to lead OSC on a permanent basis. Ingrassia briefly served as White House liaison to the Justice Department, before being transferred to the Homeland Security Department

Trump has named Paul Ingrassia to lead OSC on a permanent basis. Ingrassia briefly served as White House liaison to the Justice Department, before being transferred to the Homeland Security Department Homeland Security Department

Feds fired en masse seek to compel oversight agency to investigate their cases

The Office of Special Counsel dropped the probationary worker appeals after Trump fired the agency's head.

Federal employees fired under the Trump administration are taking a novel approach to combat their dismissals, seeking to compel the agency tasked with investigating illegal actions against civil servants to take up their cases. 

The Office of Special Counsel violated its statutory duties when it declined to probe whether the Trump administration acted unlawfully by firing tens of thousands of newly hired or promoted federal workers earlier this year, several such employees represented by the group Democracy Forward said in a new lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington on Wednesday. OSC had issued preliminary rulings in favor of the probationary workers, but President Trump subsequently fired the head of the agency and replaced him with his own appointee. New OSC leadership then sent letters to all of the more than 2,000 employees who brought their cases before it to notify them it was dropping the matter. 

Trump decided to “remake OSC” after it initially ruled against his administration’s actions, which were first reported by Government Executive. Hampton Dellinger, a President Biden appointee, initially challenged his own firing in court, but eventually agreed to leave after losing his case at the appellate level. 

“He attacked its independence, fired the then-Special Counsel, and installed a White House loyalist as the new head of OSC,” Democracy Forward said in its complaint. 

Trump tapped Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, to serve as acting head of OSC, though Greer has subsequently named Charles Baldis, a former Senate staffer, to carry out his duties. 

In addition to pursuing cases before OSC, fired probationary workers have brought their cases to federal court. Two judges at the district court level ruled the firings were illegal and paused them, but the Supreme Court subsequently struck down those injunctions. On Monday, an appeals court in Maryland ordered that one of those cases be dismissed. Many of the terminated workers were rehired while injunctions were in place, and only some agencies re-fired them after the Supreme Court’s ruling came down. 

Trump has since changed the rules for probationary employees, making it easier to fire them. Already the workers were considered to be in a trial period and did not enjoy the same protections as most civil servants, though existing law requires they be fired only for performance or conduct. 

In their new complaint, the fired federal employees, who were unnamed but who worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the General Services Administration, the Health and Human Services Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said OSC never gave an adequate explanation for reversing course and “disregarded its statutory obligation to protect federal employees from unlawful employment actions.” 

The administration’s argument rested upon a misinterpretation of the statute authorizing OSC and the protections probationary employees are entitled to under it, the complainants said. Rather than avoiding the issue due to the workers’ limited rights of appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, as OSC said it was forced to do, the employees bringing the case said OSC was “expressly tasked” with investigating cases in which MSPB has no jurisdiction. 

“Congress mandated that OSC serve as an independent safeguard to protect federal employees and preserve the federal government’s merit-based system,” they said. “Plaintiffs now bring this case to compel OSC to follow this mandate.”

In April, Baldis suggested employees were fired en masse as a class and therefore their dismissals did not amount to a prohibited personnel practice. Democracy Forward challenged that argument, saying it violated statutes and regulations that require federal employees selection and advancement be determined only based on ability and skills, their retention based solely on their performance and that they not be subjected to “arbitrary action.” 

The employees bringing the case asked the court to strike down OSC’s mass denial of probationary workers appeals and to require the agency to investigate potential prohibited personnel actions. 

Trump has named Paul Ingrassia to lead OSC on a permanent basis, who has drawn pushback for associating with white supremacists, calling federal employees “parasites” and lacking legal experience. Ingrassia was cited in a separate lawsuit brought by former FBI agents on Wednesday who said their firings were improper and alleged the nominee asked them when they began supporting Trump and if they had recently voted for any Democrats. 

The Trump administration suffered a setback in another case involving its management of the federal workforce this week. A U.S. district judge in California denied its request to dismiss a case challenging the president’s authority to carry out large-scale layoffs of federal employees. The Supreme Court previously struck down an injunction that had blocked the reductions in force, but the lower court is continuing to assess whether individual agency plans may be unlawful.

Share your news tips with us: Eric Katz: ekatz@govexec.com, Signal: erickatz.28

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