WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNN) — In wake of legal pushback, the Trump administration today revised a memo about probationary federal employees, specifying that agencies choose whether to lay them off and not the Office of Personnel Management.
“Please note that, by this memorandum, OPM is not directing agencies to take any specific performance-based actions regarding probationary employees,” reads a new paragraph in the memo, which was initially released January 20. “Agencies have ultimate decision making authority over, and responsibility for, such personnel actions.”
The update comes days after a federal judge halted layoffs at some agencies, saying that OPM does not have the authority to direct other agencies to dismiss their employees and that the mass firings of the probationary staffers were likely unlawful. An independent federal board last week also temporarily reinstated six probationary workers who were let go, finding their terminations were likely unlawful.
Tens of thousands of probationary workers, who are typically in their positions for less than one or two years and have fewer job protections, have been laid off in recent weeks as the Trump administration seeks to downsize the federal workforce.
The revision of the memo “is a clear admission that [OPM] unlawfully directed federal agencies to carry out mass terminations of probationary employees,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which sued the Trump administration over the dismissals.
Michael Fallings, a federal employment law expert and managing partner at Tully Rinckey, told CNN that the update does not change the fact that the layoffs were illegal.
Hours after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, OPM issued the original memo directing agencies to draw up lists of their probationary workers and determine whether they should be retained. In mid-February, OPM instructed agencies to move forward with the layoffs.
