A fresh legal battle has erupted in Washington, where five former federal employees are challenging the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) for shutting the door on thousands of complaints tied to President Donald Trump’s sweeping purge of government staff earlier this year.
Backed by the advocacy group Democracy Forward, the plaintiffs argue that OSC abandoned its duty when, in April, it tossed out more than 2,000 claims from probationary employees—workers who had not yet completed a year in their roles but in many cases were longtime civil servants newly reassigned.
The lawsuit points to February’s mass firing, which swept out roughly 25,000 probationary employees in one stroke. Though unions and nonprofits briefly clawed back reinstatement through the courts, appeals judges later ruled those avenues closed, leaving the watchdog agency as one of the last doors open. Or so it seemed.
That door slammed shut under acting Special Counsel Jamieson Greer, Trump’s appointee after Hampton Dellinger was abruptly removed. Dellinger had warned that the firings were probably unlawful. Greer took the opposite path, declaring the mass dismissals aligned with the new administration’s priorities and tossing out the complaints wholesale.
The plaintiffs now accuse OSC of bending to White House pressure, betraying Congress’s intent to safeguard federal employees, and abandoning its mission to protect against politically motivated employment actions. Their lawsuit asks a federal judge to declare OSC’s blanket rejection unlawful, to reopen the complaints, and to order full investigations.
The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, frames the OSC’s reversal as “arbitrary and capricious,” a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and a signal that merit-based protections in government service can be erased for political expediency.
OSC has not publicly responded to the lawsuit.
If the court sides with the plaintiffs, the agency may be forced to confront the very complaints it brushed aside—potentially reopening a fight over whether the Trump administration’s federal workforce purge crossed the line into illegality.Fired Federal Workers Take Watchdog to Court Over Trump-Era Mass Dismissals
A fresh legal battle has erupted in Washington, where five former federal employees are challenging the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) for shutting the door on thousands of complaints tied to President Donald Trump’s sweeping purge of government staff earlier this year.
Backed by the advocacy group Democracy Forward, the plaintiffs argue that OSC abandoned its duty when, in April, it tossed out more than 2,000 claims from probationary employees—workers who had not yet completed a year in their roles but in many cases were longtime civil servants newly reassigned.
The lawsuit points to February’s mass firing, which swept out roughly 25,000 probationary employees in one stroke. Though unions and nonprofits briefly clawed back reinstatement through the courts, appeals judges later ruled those avenues closed, leaving the watchdog agency as one of the last doors open. Or so it seemed.
That door slammed shut under acting Special Counsel Jamieson Greer, Trump’s appointee after Hampton Dellinger was abruptly removed. Dellinger had warned that the firings were probably unlawful. Greer took the opposite path, declaring the mass dismissals aligned with the new administration’s priorities and tossing out the complaints wholesale.
The plaintiffs now accuse OSC of bending to White House pressure, betraying Congress’s intent to safeguard federal employees, and abandoning its mission to protect against politically motivated employment actions. Their lawsuit asks a federal judge to declare OSC’s blanket rejection unlawful, to reopen the complaints, and to order full investigations.
The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, frames the OSC’s reversal as “arbitrary and capricious,” a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and a signal that merit-based protections in government service can be erased for political expediency.
OSC has not publicly responded to the lawsuit.
If the court sides with the plaintiffs, the agency may be forced to confront the very complaints it brushed aside—potentially reopening a fight over whether the Trump administration’s federal workforce purge crossed the line into illegality.
