On March 17, the federal government filed an emergency motion in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit requesting a stay of a district court’s temporary restraining order (TRO). As previously covered by InfoBytes, a district court installed a TRO requiring the federal government to reinstate thousands of probationary employees across 18 agencies. In its emergency appeal, the federal government alleged the nineteen states and the District of Columbia, the parties who requested the TRO, “lack Article III standing to represent their citizens as parens patriae against the federal government or to complain of downstream economic effects caused by the government’s employment actions.”
Despite the filing of the emergency motion, the district court noted that as of Tuesday, federal agencies were making meaningful progress toward compliance with the TRO. The U.S. government clarified that rehiring probationary employees currently on “administrative leave” was part of the process to fully reinstate them as probationary employees (covered here).
