A US federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to reinstate more than 1,000 employees at Voice of America and restore operations at the state-funded international broadcaster.
District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that the redundancies carried out under the leadership of Kari Lake at the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) were unlawful and must be reversed. Lamberth ordered that 1,042 VOA employees placed on paid administrative leave over the past year be reinstated by 23 March.
The decision follows a ruling ten days earlier in which the judge determined that President Donald Trump had improperly appointed an official to implement the sweeping staff reductions at VOA.
In his decision, Lamberth said the administration had failed to justify the layoffs. “Defendants have provided nothing approaching a principled basis for their decision,” he wrote.
The court also instructed USAGM, which oversees outlets including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, to submit a plan by next week outlining how it will resume VOA’s international broadcasting services.
