March 19, 2025

Agencies that fired 25,000 federal workers comply with court-ordered reinstatements; House Democrat wants to modernize privacy law in light of DOGE data access

5 minutes

Several federal agencies responsible for terminating nearly 25,000 federal probationary status workers told a federal court Monday evening that they’re complying with an order to reinstate those employees, giving thousands of people their jobs back for the time being. According to a status report and corresponding declarations filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, 18 federal agencies and their subcomponents said they were working to reinstate their fired probationary employees following the court order. Most of those agencies said those workers would be placed on administrative leave. While the court order doesn’t cover all fired probationary workers, the declarations in the case offer one of the first clear windows into the breadth of firings under President Donald Trump. Per figures in those declarations, the agencies initially terminated 24,813 probationary workers. Of that total, 15,499 were offered reinstatement as a direct result of the court’s order. An additional 5,925 employees, at least, were previously offered reinstatement by those respective agencies before the court’s order. That includes the 5,714 terminated employees in the U.S. Department of Agriculture who got their jobs back for 45 days as the result of a ruling by a quasi-judicial body within the executive branch known as the Merit Systems Protection Board.

As litigation plays out on DOGE access to individuals’ sensitive data, a House lawmaker is asking civil society groups, privacy experts, government technologists and others to inform legislation seeking to modernize the Privacy Act of 1974. Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., said in a press release that she is beginning an effort to reform the Privacy Act, which has been cited in various lawsuits against agencies over allegedly allowing unauthorized DOGE staffers to access data that could contain personally identifiable information. “Unaccountable billionaires, inexperienced programmers and unvetted political appointees are perpetrating the biggest government privacy scandal since Watergate,” Trahan said in the release. In order to begin this effort, Trahan is asking the public to respond to a series of questions, including the federal government’s need to balance privacy with other priorities like reducing waste, how the government can effectively leverage privacy-enhancing technologies, the privacy risks associated with artificial intelligence and more.

The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon.

If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

...more