On April 8, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed a preliminary injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on reinstating federal workers. The case arose from a lawsuit in which the plaintiffs sued the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on February 19 seeking to enjoin the alleged wrongful termination of federal workers. Following other activity in the case, on March 13, the district court issued a preliminary injunction to reinstate probationary federal workers terminated under the new administration. The next day, the OPM and the other federal agency defendants filed an ex parte application to stay the injunction, which the district court denied on March 15. The defendants then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which also denied the emergency administrative stay on March 17. Subsequently, the defendants sought relief from the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s stay pauses the district court’s order pending further proceedings in the Ninth Circuit and the potential filing of a petition for a writ of certiorari. The Supreme Court’s order noted that the District Court’s injunction relied “solely” on the plaintiffs’ allegations, which were insufficient to establish standing under law. Justices Sotomayor and Jackson would have denied the application for stay, with Justice Jackson expressing that she would have declined to address the standing question in the context of an application for emergency relief, where the issue is pending in the lower courts and the applicants did not demonstrate urgency in the form of interim irreparable harm.