WASHINGTON – Responding to reports that the Trump Administration is planning a mass layoff of probationary federal workers, the ACLU and the ACLU of the District of Columbia today urged members of Congress to prevent this illegal action. Such mass layoffs would threaten the essential services that federal workers provide to Americans, as well as the critical check civil servants provide on the Executive Branch.
The letter urges the Senate and House leadership of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability to “use the full force” of their congressional authority to prevent mass layoffs that violate the law.
According to reports, federal agencies have been directed to compile lists of newly hired employees. Nearly all federal civilian employees are routinely in a probationary period for the first one or two years of service. Currently, more than 200,000 federal workers are considered probationary employees. The law allows for the termination of probationary employees for performance or conduct reasons, but not mass firing on a wide scale without individualized assessment or following Reduction in Force procedures. Federal law also clearly prohibits dismissal of probationary employees for partisan political purposes.
The civil service provides an important check on abuses by the Executive Branch by being loyal to the Constitution and federal law—not to any president or political party. The ACLU letter makes clear that a mass layoff of probationary federal employees would undermine this critical and historical role, in addition to violating federal law and affecting essential services.
“As far back as 1883, Congress recognized that hiring for ordinary civil service jobs based on loyalty to the president is both a dangerous abuse of power and an inefficient way to provide services to Americans,” Scott Michelman, Legal Director at the ACLU of the District of Columbia. “We need today’s Congress to step up to protect our merit-based, nonpartisan civil service, and to prevent Trump’s latest attempt to hijack the federal government for his own political ends.”
“This kind of mass firing threatens an important check on executive power and puts critical government services that we all rely on at risk, from keeping our water clean to helping us recover from natural disasters,” said Kia Hamadanchy, Senior Policy Counsel at the ACLU. “Purges of this nature seek to destroy a civil service that is not beholden to any political party or president, but to the Constitution and the American people. Congress must step in.”