A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to rescind its memo that directs federal agencies to terminate its probationary employees, ruling that the memo was "illegal." 

The order refers to a memo from earlier this month that told agencies to prepare to fire employees who are still in their probationary period, despite having been employed for a year or more, which was part of the federal government's efforts to restructure itself, including by reducing the federal workforce.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in California said that the memo needed to be "rescinded" and that communication of his new order needed to be communicated to the Defense Department on Friday as it prepared to fire some of its employees.

“The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees within another agency,” Alsup said, per NBC News. “It can hire its own employees, yes. It can fire them. But it cannot order or direct some other agency to do so.”

Alsup did not declare whether the recently fired employees needed to be reinstated.

An attorney for the government argued that the memo was not an "order" but a "request," which agencies could choose to ignore. However, Alsup rejected the characterization, stating that it was taken more as a command.

“Something aberrational happens, not just in one agency, but all across the government, in many agencies on the same day, the same thing," Alsup said. "Doesn’t that sound like to you that somebody ordered it to happen, as opposed to, ‘Oh, we just got guidance.'"

It is not clear exactly how many employees have been impacted by the memo so far, but it could have affected as many as 200,000 federal employees in total.

The judge also ordered the acting Office of Personnel Management Director Charles Ezell to testify at a future hearing.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.