A Minneapolis man has filed a legal challenge against the federal government after he was fired from his job as a top official in the Minnesota district office of the Small Business Administration (SBA) in last month’s wave of federal layoffs.
Chris Wicker, the former deputy director of the SBA office in Minneapolis, filed a class appeal on Friday with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an independent, quasi-judicial agency that mediates disputes between federal agencies and their employees.
The appeal alleges the mass firings were invalid because they did not comply with any of the federal government’s layoff requirements — there was no cause, notice or severance.
The appeal demands reinstatement and back pay for the “illegally fired” employees, according to a news release issued by Brown Goldstein & Levy, the Baltimore-based law firm representing Wicker.
Wicker, a six-year U.S. Air Force veteran, was initially fired last month by email, but he was rehired two days later and then fired again the next day. His termination was effective immediately.
“The SBA’s actions weren’t just unfair — they were illegal," Wicker said. “SBA employees, including military veterans like me, were hired to serve the public and support small businesses only to be fired in a chaotic and baseless process.”
Wicker is joined in the appeal by two other SBA employees who were laid off under similar circumstances. Appeals have been filed on behalf of probationary employees laid off at several federal departments and agencies.
Each appeal names several employees as representatives of a proposed class of all employees at agencies decimated by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s rash of cost-cutting.