A veterans affairs spokesperson declined to comment. A department of interior spokesperson said the agency does not comment on litigation over personnel matters.
The other agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The plaintiffs include the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers. The union's president, Everett Kelley, said in a statement the decision was an important victory against “an administration hell-bent on crippling federal agencies and their work on behalf of the American public”.
### **25,000 WORKERS**
Alsup last month had temporarily blocked OPM from ordering agencies to fire probationary employees, but declined at the time to require that fired workers get their jobs back. The plaintiffs subsequently amended their lawsuit to include the agencies that fired probationary workers.
About 25,000 workers across the US government had been fired as of March 5, according to a Reuters tally, and another 75,000 have taken a buyout. The Trump administration has not released statistics on the firings, and it was not immediately clear how many employees could be affected by Thursday's decision.
In the lawsuit before Alsup, the plaintiffs claim the mass firings were unlawful because they were ordered by OPM rather than left to the discretion of individual agencies.
OPM has maintained that it merely asked agencies in a January 20 memo to identify probationary workers and decide which ones were not “mission critical” and could be fired, and did not order them to terminate anyone.