Overview
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, with co-counsel from Brown Goldstein Levy, Gilbert Employment Law, and James & Hoffman, represents probationary federal employees in class action appeals against 20 federal government agencies for unlawfully terminating them from their respective jobs.
The proposed classes of appellants include probationary or trial period federal employees from 20 agencies who were terminated in mass layoffs by the Trump Administration. Allegedly, the government agencies failed to perform the mass terminations in accordance with proper procedures—namely, the requirements for conducting reductions in force (RIFs) of federal workforces.
The appellants filed their class action appeals with the Merit Systems Protection Board (M.S.P.B.), an independent federal agency that oversees and protects the rights of federal employees. The appellants seek full restoration to their jobs and backpay on behalf of themselves and the putative classes they represent.
Agencies Where These Practices Are Challenged
Between February 28 and March 14, 2025, the appellants filed their class action appeals with the MSPB against the following 20 agencies:
- U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
- Agriculture (USDA)
- Commerce (DOC)
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
- U.S. Digital Service
- Education (ED)
- Energy (DOE)
- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
- General Services Administration (GSA)
- Health and Human Services (HHS)
- Homeland Security (DHS)
- Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
- Interior (DOI)
- National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
- Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
- Small Business Administration (SBA)
- Transportation (DOT)
- Treasury
- Veterans Affairs (VA)
Case Background
Shortly after taking office, President Trump announced his intention to achieve a “transformation of the Federal bureaucracy” by “shrink[ing] the size of the federal workforce.” [2] Starting on February 10, 2025, the Trump Administration initiated mass layoffs across numerous federal agencies, such as the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Education.
The employees who filed these cases were probationary or trial period employees of their respective government agency. They seek to represent other similarly situated individuals who were subjected to their agency’s unlawful RIF in class actions.
The workers argue that they were fired to downsize the federal workforce without being afforded the rights and procedures federal law requires during such a downsizing. Federal law requires the federal government to undertake a structured and orderly process for reducing the federal workforce, including by providing 60-days advance notice of termination and by retaining employees according to statutorily defined factors, like tenure and performance. The law also requires that termination be a last resort—agencies must seek to place federal employees elsewhere in the federal workforce before firing them. Instead, the appellants claim, they were abruptly terminated, with total disregard for these key protections.
They are seeking the full restoration of employment of every member of the class, the award of any earnings and other benefits that they lost because of their removal and the elimination of any reference to their termination in agency records.