Thousands of Agriculture Department employees who were fired last month must be reinstated in their old positions for at least 45 days, a board that handles federal worker disputes ordered Wednesday.

The fired employees were on probationary status and relatively new in their positions, swept up in the Trump administration’s push to rapidly reduce the size of the federal workforce in part by targeting those types of workers. Probationary employees have fewer Civil Service protections than other government workers who have been in their jobs longer, and have been seen by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the tech billionaire leading the downsizing effort, as the easiest to fire.

Even so, there are rules that agencies must follow. Cathy Harris, the chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board, the administrative body where employees can appeal adverse actions, said in her order Wednesday that she had “reasonable grounds” to believe that agencies that had fired probationary workers violated a law that dictates proper personnel practices.

— The Associated Press