*

Judge rules White House personnel office lacks power to

order

firings

*

Hundreds of NOAA staff notified they are being let go

*

Remote US federal employees told to move to Washington

(Adds background grafs, details on firings at NOAA and IRS in

paragraphs 4-11)

By Dan Levine and Daniel Wiessner

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 27 (Reuters) - A California federal

judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump administration

from ordering the U.S. Department of Defense and other federal

agencies to carry out the mass firings of thousands of recently

hired employees.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said

during a hearing that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management

lacked the power to order federal agencies to fire any workers,

including probationary employees who typically have less than a

year of experience.

Republican President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk,

who oversees the so-called Department of Government Efficiency,

are spearheading an unprecedented effort to shrink the federal

bureaucracy, including through job cuts.

Those efforts have resulted in a fierce pushback from

Democrats, unions and federal workers, who argue the job cuts

are illegal and could compromise government functions.

Already, the administration has been forced to recall

some personnel in critical roles. But Trump has backed Musk to

the hilt and has

embraced Musk's goal

of slicing $1 trillion from the nation's $6.7 trillion

budget.

Budget experts say Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla

, is unlikely to reach his target by trimming jobs and

reducing waste and fraud, and may have to slash government

programs, including benefits.

On Thursday, hundreds of probationary workers at the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which conducts

climate science, were notified they were being let go, according

to a source familiar with the situation.

Officials at NOAA did not respond to a request for

comment.

At the Internal Revenue Service, the head of the

agency's Transformation and Strategy Office, a group of 60

employees working on modernization efforts, told his team

Thursday there was a risk the whole office would be eliminated,

according a person briefed on the matter.

David Padrino, chief of the office, told his team that

he planned to resign effective a week from Friday, the person

said, adding that IRS executives have been told to brace for a

"drastic" cut to headcount in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, OPM, the federal human resources agency, has

instructed at least two dozen of its own employees working

remotely that they

must relocate

to Washington in order to keep their jobs. They were given

until March 7 to decide.

WIDESPREAD HARM

In his ruling, Alsup ordered OPM to rescind a January 20

memo and a February 14 email directing agencies to identify

probationary employees who are not "mission-critical" and

terminate them.

Alsup said he could not order the Defense Department itself,

which is expected to fire 5,400 probationary employees on

Friday, and other agencies not to terminate workers because they

are not defendants in the lawsuit brought by several unions and

nonprofit groups.

But he suggested that the mass firings of federal workers

that began two weeks ago would cause widespread harm, including

cuts to national parks, scientific research, and services for

veterans.

"Probationary employees are the lifeblood of our government.

They come in at a low level and work their way up. That's how we

renew ourselves," said Alsup, an appointee of Democratic former

President Bill Clinton.

The White House and the U.S. Department of Justice did not

immediately respond to requests for comment.

The plaintiffs include the largest federal employee union,

the American Federation of Government Employees, four other

unions and nonprofits whose missions include advocating for

services for veterans and conservation of national parks.

'I DON'T BELIEVE IT'

The Trump administration has maintained that the memo and

email from OPM merely asked agencies to review their

probationary workforces and decide who could potentially be

terminated, and did not require them to do anything.

"An order is not usually phrased as a request," Justice

Department lawyer Kelsey Helland told Alsup during the hearing.

But the judge said it was unlikely that virtually every

federal agency independently decided to decimate its staff.

The judge specifically ordered OPM to communicate to the

Defense Department by Friday that its memo and email regarding

probationary employees are invalid. And it must give the same

message to other agencies including the National Park Service

and the Bureau of Land Management where staff cuts are likely to

impact the nonprofits involved in the lawsuit, Alsup said.

The ruling will be in place temporarily while Alsup

considers the legal challenge, which claims that OPM has no

power over the hiring and firing of federal employees, and that

its memo and email amounted to formal rules that can only be

adopted through a lengthy administrative process.

Agencies began mass firings of probationary employees

earlier this month. A second wave of mass layoffs targeting

career employees began this week and a White House memo issued

on Wednesday instructed agencies to submit plans by March 13 for

a "significant reduction" in staffing.

Unions have filed several other lawsuits challenging Trump's

efforts to reshape the federal workforce in the month since he

took office, but have already faced procedural hurdles in

pursuing them.