Homeland Security officials visit a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office in Miami in 2019. NOAA is among the federal agencies that’s been targeted for job cuts. (Photo by Tara Molle/Department of Homeland Security)
The Washington state attorney general on Tuesday joined another lawsuit against the Trump administration, this time over the “damaging and illegal” firings of federal employees.
In court filings, the attorney general’s office said at least 1,000 of Washington’s 76,000 federal employees had lost their jobs.
Tera Heintz, an attorney with the office, notes in a court brief that Washington has three national parks, eight national forests, six military bases and dams run by the federal government.
“Local governments within the State also rely on and interact with the federal government every day,” Heintz wrote, noting disaster response, emergency preparedness and public health as areas of cooperation.
She specifically cites chaos in the state’s annual salmon harvest. Heintz writes that delays due to staffing at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “would wreak havoc on the fishing communities, both commercial and recreational.”
“Many of the president’s power grabs have this problem in common — they’re illegal,” Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement. “These firings don’t save the public a dime, but they do make government less responsive, particularly in the communities across the nation where these employees live and serve.”
Federal employee unions and advocacy groups brought the lawsuit that Washington is joining in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
Last week, the plaintiffs won a temporary restraining order from a federal judge there, who called the firings illegal and directed the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to rescind orders firing employees in several federal agencies, including the Departments of Veterans Affairs, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Department of Defense, Small Business Administration and Fish and Wildlife Service.
So far, the firings have focused on probationary employees hired or promoted in the past year or two. The government notified workers their termination was due to performance reasons, despite many saying they’d recently received positive evaluations.
The White House is eyeing further layoffs affecting tens of thousands more employees. For example, the Trump administration plans to cut 80,000 workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to an internal memo reported on by the publication Government Executive.
Scott Olson, a veteran and cancer survivor who worked with homeless veterans at the VA, was among those already fired.
“I felt like it was a betrayal, not just from my dedication, but on the values I thought the VA stood for,” Olson said on a press call Tuesday with U.S. Sen. Patty Murray. “I had fought through war, cancer and through every challenge life has thrown at me, only to be cast aside by the very system that I believe in.”
This is the sixth lawsuit Washington has led or joined over the president’s actions in the first six weeks of his term. Others have successfully challenged President Donald Trump’s executive orders on birthright citizenship, gender-affirming care for transgender youth and the federal funding freeze.