Fourth Circuit Questions States’ Power to Dispute Trump Cuts (1)

A Richmond, Va.-based federal appeals court Tuesday questioned whether states have standing to challenge the federal government’s firing of nearly 25,000 employees new to their roles.

A three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit asked the states to list “concrete” ways the Trump administration’s dismissals of public workers harmed them, apart from the damage done to dismissed employees. Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson III and Allison Jones Rushing repeatedly questioned whether the government’s failure to notify the states ahead of the terminations gave them the power to sue to reverse them.

Tuesday’s hearing was the latest chapter in the Trump administration’s defense of its downsizing of federal agencies. President Donald Trump in his first days in office demanded they cut staff, prompting them to terminate workers in “probationary” status.

At the center of the case is a law that requires the federal government give states 60 days’ notice before it begins mass layoffs.

A group of states asked the panel to uphold a lower court’s ruling stating that the firings harmed them and ordering the Trump administration to rehire dismissed employees in “probationary” status. The ruling applied to workers that live or work in 19 states and Washington, D.C.

“The parties that suffer the injury are nowhere to be found,” Wilkinson said from the bench on Tuesday.

The abrupt firings spurred lawsuits in California and Maryland, and judges ordered a slew of agencies to temporarily reinstate the employees. The Fourth Circuit later freed the Trump administration to fire the employees while it considers an appeal of the lower court’s order.

The panel also examined whether it has the power to intervene in the firings. Wilkinson and Rushing repeatedly pointed to a 1978 law that directs federal employees to appeal their termination to the Merit Systems Protection Board, a commission that mediates disputes between agencies and their workers.

Federal judges in Massachusetts and D.C. in the early weeks of Trump’s second term declined to intervene in the administration’s personnel moves, saying that the law required employees to first take their complaints to the MSPB and other administrative pathways.

Rushing raised the possibility that the court’s ruling could conflict with future MSPB decisions, if that panel orders agencies to reinstate dismissed employees.

The case is Maryland v. USDA, 4th Cir., No. 25-1248, hearing 5/6/25.