The administration of US President Donald Trump has, for the first time, acknowledged in court filings that it dismissed almost 25,000 recently hired workers.
It stated that federal agencies were working to reinstate all of them after a judge ruled that their terminations were likely unlawful.
The filings, submitted late on Monday in a federal court in Baltimore, Maryland, include statements from officials at 18 agencies, all of whom confirmed that the reinstated probationary workers were being placed on temporary administrative leave.
The mass dismissals, part of Trump’s broader purge of the federal workforce, were widely reported. However, the court filings are reportedly the first full accounting of the terminations by the administration.
Most agencies stated that they had dismissed a few hundred workers.
It was revealed that the Treasury Department terminated approximately 7,600 employees, the Department of Agriculture around 5,700, and the Department of Health and Human Services more than 3,200, according to the filings.
District Judge James Bredar ruled on 13 March that the mass dismissals of probationary workers, which began last month, violated regulations governing large-scale layoffs of federal employees. He ordered their reinstatement pending further litigation.
