If the rulings hold, taxpayers will be on the hook for paying thousands of dollars to those employees who were let go and who will have to be offered their jobs back. At least three employees from the Office of State Human Resources were among those fired days after Cooper was sworn in as governor in January.
The state has appealed the ruling in one case, but all the cases are tied to a separate and wider lawsuit Cooper filed charging that a number of new laws enacted after he won are unconstitutional.
When Cooper beat former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in November last year, the Republican-controlled General Assembly started passing new laws limiting Cooper’s power as governor. One of those new laws greatly limited the number of employees in the state’s HR and budget office that Cooper could dismiss.