A group of fired National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees is getting their jobs back — for the second time — and will receive nine months of back pay.

Last month, NOAA sent an email to several fired employees, informing them that their April 2025 termination is being rescinded and they have the option to return to their jobs.

“As we discussed, NOAA is committed to a fresh start and we are eager to have you back on the team,” according to the email obtained by Federal News Network. “We recognize that it has been over six months since you were in this role, and we are prepared to support your transition back into the workplace.” 

The Trump administration fired about 25,000 probationary federal employees around mid-February, including about 650 probationary employees at NOAA. Agencies cited performance and misconduct as reasons for the terminations, even in cases where employees received outstanding performance reviews.

Probationary employees are generally still serving in their first year on the job, and are easier to remove than more tenured federal employees. But some affected federal employees were serving in probationary periods because they had recently accepted promotions. 

Those employees were briefly reinstated following rulings by federal judges in March, only to be fired again in April after the Supreme Court paused the lower courts’ reinstatement orders. During that brief period, a fraction of reinstated NOAA employees completed their probationary period.

A reinstated NOAA employee, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation, told Federal News Network that eligible individuals received calls from the agency’s human resources office with reinstatement offers just before Christmas, and that about 40 former employees have been reinstated. 

“It will be like as if you never left. It will be as if you’ve been on administrative leave the entire time,” the employee recalled.

A NOAA spokesperson declined to comment. 

Terminated employees who do not want their jobs back will still receive about nine months of back pay. NOAA will designate their separations as voluntary resignations from federal service, effective Dec 22, 2025.

“Please note that a decision to depart from federal service voluntarily will not impact your pay for the period on administrative leave. You will still receive back pay for the period of April 10, 2025 to January 12, 2026,” the email states.

According to the email, former NOAA employees who received reinstatement offers had until Monday to accept the offer. Those who accepted the offer will return to work on Jan. 12.  

The email states that failure to respond by the deadline “may result in disciplinary action against you, up to and including your removal from the federal service.”

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled in September that the Office of Personnel Management unlawfully “directed agencies to fire under false pretense,” and ordered agencies to update personnel records to specify that these employees were not fired for poor performance or misconduct. 

The judge, however, stopped short of offering reinstatement to fired probationary employees, citing a Supreme Court ruling last summer that the Trump administration has broad authority to reshape and shrink the federal workforce.

It’s not clear how many former NOAA employees declined reinstatement. The reinstated employee told Federal News Network that many former employees have “moved on” and pursued other work.

“I feel like I really closed the NOAA chapter for myself and sort of mourned that. It’s a place I originally thought I would spend my entire career — at least a significant portion. It’s a place where people are very passionate about the work, including myself,” the former employee said. “I had gone through that kind of grieving period. And I think having to even just make the decision of whether or not I was going to go back was emotional in many ways. You think you’ve moved on, and then all of a sudden, very unexpectedly, this opportunity presented itself.”

The former employee said a “sense of the importance of public service” was part of the reason for accepting reinstatement.

“Especially right now with how severe the staffing cuts have been at NOAA, when they can’t hire more people — at least right now, in most parts of the agency — I felt called to go back and help support my old office,” the reinstated employee said.

Politico’s E&E News reported last month that the Environmental Protection Agency has also rehired probationary employees it fired in early 2025.

The post ‘A fresh start:’ NOAA reinstates some probationary employees it already fired twice first appeared on Federal News Network.