A federal judge ruled last week that a group of fired government employees can move forward with a major lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services. The decision is a significant win for the workers, who claim they were wrongly terminated during a mass firing event last year.
The trouble started on April 1, 2025, when the agency cut roughly 10,000 jobs. The employees filing the lawsuit say the decision to fire them was based on completely wrong information. According to the court documents, the government used personnel records that were full of errors.
For example, some workers who had actually received high performance ratings were listed in the system as having poor scores. Because of these mistakes, longtime employees say they lost their jobs and, in some cases, their retirement benefits.
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Lawyers for the government tried to get the case thrown out. They argued that these workers were in the wrong court and should have used a different process for employment complaints.
However, Judge Beryl Howell disagreed. She ruled that because the workers are blaming inaccurate records for the firings, they have the right to sue under the Privacy Act. This law requires the government to keep accurate records on its citizens and employees.
The lawsuit claims this all happened because officials were in too much of a rush. The complaint mentions the “DOGE” department and Elon Musk, alleging that the push to cut the workforce quickly led to sloppy data work.
The workers even pointed to a statement from Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., where he allegedly admitted that mistakes were part of the plan and that they knew some people would be wrongfully fired.
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While the judge did dismiss the claims against the officials personally, she kept the lawsuit against the agencies alive.
This means the Department of Health and Human Services, along with other agencies, will have to face these accusations in court. The fired workers will now get the chance to prove that computer errors and bad data cost them their livelihoods.
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