A federal judge put the kibosh on Elon Musk's DOGE-led mass firings of federal workers, calling the billionaire's tactics "illegal."
San Francisco's U.S. District Judge William Alsup said on Thursday that the Office of Personnel Management can hire and fire employees within its own department, but "cannot order or direct some other agency to do so."
"The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees within another agency," said the judge, via NPR. "It can hire its own employees, yes. Can fire them. But it cannot order or direct some other agency to do so."
"OPM has no authority to tell any agency in the United States government, other than itself, who they can hire and who they can fire, period," Alsup added.
But, although Alsup has blocked Donald Trump's OPM from continuing to burn down the U.S. federal workforce (at least for now), he wasn't able to reinstate the jobs of workers already fired.
The ruling is a setback for the Trump administration's ongoing effort to dramatically shrink the federal workforce. But it does not appear to immediately help any of the federal workers who have already lost their jobs.
That's because U.S. District Judge William Alsup stopped short of ordering the agencies to reinstate the fired workers or to halt looming firings. Alsup said he doesn't currently have the authority to do that.
The San Francisco-based judge, however, did order OPM to rescind any directives it has issued requiring the mass terminations. OPM also must inform several agencies that it has no power to dictate firings across the federal bureaucracy.
In the end, Judge Alsup admonished the OPM for their despicable dishonesty when it cited "performance" as the reason thousands of employees were fired.
"That's just not right in our country, is it, that we would run our agencies with lies like that and stain somebody's record for the rest of their life?" Alsup said as he issued his ruling from the bench after a court hearing in a lawsuit brought by labor unions and organizations whose members are served by agencies hobbled by the mass terminations. "Who's going to want to work in a government that would do that?"
And Alsup is just getting started. In March, according to Mediaite, the judge will "call acting OPM Director Charles Ezell to testify under oath at an upcoming hearing in March."
Previously: Trump is now mocking federal workers with memes threatening their jobs
