Hundreds of fired probationary employees from the U.S. Department of Energy are returning to work but they may have to go through a new hire onboarding process and face the looming possibility of being fired again.

Reesha Trznadel, DOE’s acting chief human capital officer, said in a declaration to a federal judge March 17 that about 555 probationary employees who were fired in mid-February have been reinstated. The document did not detail where these employees work. 

The rehiring was required by a temporary restraining order from U.S. District Court Judge James Bredar in Maryland and covers the dozens of probationary DOE workers who were let go from their roles at the agency’s Hanford site office as well as Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  

The hundreds of workers fired from Bonneville Power Administration are not included in the order. 

Those reinstatements, though, do not mean those DOE workers will immediately return to their prior duties, according to Trznadel’s statement. All rehired probationary workers are going through onboarding again, including activities such as training, human resources paperwork, obtaining new security badges, reinstituting applicable security clearance actions and more.  

The Trump administration is appealing Bredar’s ruling as well as a similar one by U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup in northern California. And Trznadel says in her statement that if the appeals are successful, those employees may again be without a job. 

“In short, employees could be subjected to multiple changes in their employment status in a matter of weeks,” Trznadel said. 

Trznadel’s declaration was among several from multiple federal agencies notifying the court of its compliance with the restraining order.  

In total, roughly 24,000 federal workers across the country were fired by the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, to drastically cut government spending. Federal workers in their probationary period, who have worked for one or two years and sometimes more, do not have the same job protections as non-probationary workers. 

The firings were challenged by labor rights groups, with the Washington State Attorney General’s Office joining the lawsuit filed in northern California heard by Alsup. 

Along with also ordering fired federal probationary employees be rehired, Alsup further clarified his order after news reports that at least one agency was rehiring the fired probationary employees but then placing them all on administrative leave. 

“This is not allowed by the preliminary injunction, for it would not restore the services the preliminary injunction intends to restore,” Alsup wrote in his latest order. “Defendants shall state the extent to which any rehired probationary employees are being placed on administrative leave by March 18, 2025 at noon.”