A federal judge on Thursday ordered six U.S. agencies to reinstate thousands of recently-hired employees who were fired as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to shrink the federal workforce.

The ruling made by U.S. District Judge William Alsup during a hearing in San Francisco applies to the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department.

Dozens of people who worked for the VA were fired last month, including four social worker associates interviewed by The Denver Gazette whose job was to help homeless veterans get off of the streets through Denver’s York Street Center. 

Three of the four were veterans ranging in age from 31 to 37 who had served in Iraq and Qatar. None of them had heard about the judge’s ruling as of Thursday afternoon and had not received any word to return to work. 

The exact number of VA workers who were fired nationally is not clear, but in a letter to President Donald Trump last week, nearly two dozen Democratic U.S. senators, including Colorado’s John Hickenlooper, said the Trump administration has fired roughly 5,800 veterans and called the firings illegal.  

A third of the VA workforce is comprised of veterans.

The VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System, which employs around 3,700 staff serving more than 110,000 veterans, confirmed that many of those who were dismissed were probationary staff. The system’s workforce had fluctuated over the years — about 3,500 in 2019 and in 2021, 4,000. At 3,700 workers, the 50 employees fired last month represent about 1.4% of the workforce.

The Trump administration has argued that the federal government is too bloated and too much money is lost to waste and fraud. The government has some $36 trillion in debt and ran a $1.8 trillion deficit last year, and both sides of the political spectrum agree on the need for changes. To Trump, the changes begin with shrinking the size of the federal bureaucracy.

Democrats have sharply criticized the layoffs, calling them chaotic. Meanwhile, members of Colorado’s Republican congressional delegation have said they trust the Trump administration’s approach.

Alsup last month temporarily blocked the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the human resources department for federal agencies, from ordering agencies to fire probationary employees, but declined at the time to require that fired workers get their jobs back.

The White House said it plans to fight Thursday’s ruling ordering the administration to immediately reinstate the probationary federal workers that were fired.

“A single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “The president has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch — singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the President’s agenda.”

Probationary workers typically have less than one year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees. They have fewer job protections than other government workers, but in general can only be fired for performance issues.

Alsup said on Thursday that U.S. Office of Personnel Management has no power to order firings and that there is evidence that it improperly directed the termination of workers at the six agencies. He did not order the 16 other agencies named in the lawsuit by unions and nonprofit groups to reinstate workers.

“It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said.

The potential scale of Trump’s efforts to shrink the U.S. federal government could become clearer on Thursday, the deadline for government agencies to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and to slash their budgets.

There was no immediate response to Alsup’s ruling by Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins.

Collins had announced that his plan was to oust 83,000 VA employees by August in order to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. That translates to a 15% cut. The VA workforce had expanded to 482,000 during the Biden administration, in part to cover veterans affected by burn pits under the 2022 PACT Act.

In a news release last month, the VA said the firings would save the department $98 million annually, money it would redirect “back toward health care, benefits and services for VA beneficiaries.”

In an opinion piece, Collins said he regrets “when anyone loses their job.”

“But the federal government does not exist to employ people. It exists to serve people. At VA, we are focused on serving veterans better than ever before, and doing so requires changing and improving the organization,” he wrote. “Right now, VA’s biggest problem is that its bureaucracy and inefficiencies are getting in the way of customer convenience and service to veterans.”

Denver Gazette reporter Carol McKinley and the Washington Examiner contributed to this report.