San Diego has joined 40 other cities challenging the mass firing of probationary federal employees by the Trump administration, contending they are illegal and pose a threat to the local economy and public services.
“The consequences of these mass firings extend beyond those who lost their jobs,” said City Attorney Heather Ferbert, a Democrat. “They impact veterans, seniors, military families and countless others in our community who rely on the services these federal employees provide.”
A judge halted the firings last week by issuing a preliminary injunction. The Trump administration has appealed that ruling to a higher court.
The move by San Diego comes a month after the all-Democratic City Council bolstered the city’s power to legally fight Trump by streamlining the process Ferbert must follow to join litigation filed by other state and local governments.
The new policy allows Ferbert to skip the time-consuming step of asking the council for permission in the form of a briefing session that must be scheduled days in advance and publicly noticed.
Instead, she can now email the council a request to take legal action on a specific federal action and then move forward without a briefing session, unless three or more of the council’s nine members request one.
A few days after the council increased her power, Ferbert joined San Francisco and several other cities in challenging Trump administration efforts to withhold grant money from local governments that don’t cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
The lawsuit that challenges the mass firings contends that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management lacks the legal authority to impose the terminations.
The suit, which was filed by multiple labor unions that represent the affected workers, says the firings violate the Administrative Procedure Act and other federal employment protections.
“We are joining this amicus brief to push back against an unlawful and unjustified attack on workers who serve the public and to protect the integrity of federal employment practices,” Ferbert said in a news release.
San Diego is home to tens of thousands of federal employees, many of whom provide essential services across multiple agencies, including defense, healthcare and public safety.
And in recent weeks, a barrage of threats to their jobs is distressing a workforce more used to delivering those services than defending their livelihoods. “People still on probation are very afraid for their jobs,” one Justice Department employee told The San Diego Union-Tribune earlier this month.
Ferbert said the indiscriminate firing of probationary employees in federal agencies with a strong presence in San Diego — such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Navy and the Social Security Administration — will have immediate consequences for local workers, their families and the critical services they provide.
Ferbert acknowledged last month that such moves come with some risk of retaliation from the Trump administration, but she said the issues at stake are important enough to take that risk.
“I don’t intend to needlessly poke the bear,” she said. “But some fights are worth having, and I think this one is worth having.”
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