Interior Department officials on Monday were denied a stay of an order requiring them to rehire roughly 1,000 National Park Service workers fired earlier this year while they were on probationary status.

"Given that the district court found that the employees were wrongfully terminated and ordered an immediate return to the status quo ante, an administrative stay of the district court’s order would not preserve the status quo," the majority ruling (attached below) from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stated. "It would do just the opposite — it would disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head."

Trump administration officials on Friday asked for a stay of a federal judge's order that they rehire employees, including those from the National Park Service, who were fired on Valentine's Day and in the weeks following. In doing so, the department maintained that going through rehiring would be confusing and add "significant administrative burdens" for the department.

"Among other things, all reinstated individuals will have to be onboarded again, which would include the labor-intensive processes of coordinating human resources efforts and paperwork, issuing new security badges, re-enrolling affected individuals in benefits programs, and calculating and processing the amount of any financial obligation that the Department may owe as a result of the reinstatement offers and the amounts, if any, that reinstated individuals request to have withheld for various work-related benefits," reads an affidavit filed along with the stay request, which was filed Friday.

"... offering reinstatement to terminated probationary or trial period appointees will interfere with the effective functioning of the Department. On and after February 14, 2025, the Department has made meaningful changes to address the challenged terminations, including reassigning the duties performed by the terminated individuals, many of whom would have no duties to perform if they accepted reinstatement," it added.

Judge Bridget S. Bade (appointed by President Trump) partially dissented from the majority opinion, written by Judges Barry Silverman (appointed by President Bill Clinton) and Ana de Alba (appointed by President Biden), saying she would have granted a limited administrative stay. She wrote that the terminations by the Interior Department in effect created a new status quo, and that "[T]he preliminary injunction will change that status quo by requiring those agencies to 'immediately offer reinstatement to any and all probationary employees terminated on or about February 13th and 14th, 2025.'"

"[i]t seeks to facilitate that change by requiring the agencies to 'submit a list of all probationary employees terminated on or about February 13th and 14th with an explanation as to each of what has been done to comply with' the injunction," she continued. "A limited administrative stay would briefly pause that change while we decide the merits of the motion for stay pending appeal.

"... In sum, a limited administrative stay is necessary to preserve the status quo as it existed prior to the district court’s preliminary injunction. Doing so will allow us to rule on the motion for a stay pending appeal without potentially subjecting the government and the terminated employees to whiplash caused by diverging downstream decisions," wrote Judge Bade.

Roughly 1,000 Park Service employees were fired on Valentine's Day, when the Trump administration fired thouands of workers across the federal government who hadn't finished their probationary periods. 

U.S. District Judge William Alsup last Thursday granted a preliminary injunction broadening a temporary restraining order against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and its acting director, Charles Ezell, finding the termination of probationary federal employees illegal because OPM had no authority to order it.