Judge overturns Trump firing of personnel board member, citing lack of justification
WASHINGTON – A federal judge on Tuesday reinstated a member of the board that oversees personnel disputes for federal workers, ruling President Donald Trump wasn't authorized to remove her without justification.
This case represents a constitutional clash between the branches of government because Trump claims the authority to hire and fire everyone in the executive branch while Congress sets limits on the removal of leaders of independent agencies such as the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Members of the board, designed to protect federal civil service workers from being fired for issues unrelated to their performance, are appointed to seven-year terms and can be removed under a 1978 statute “only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."
But on Feb. 10, Trump notified board member Cathy Harris, whose term runs to March 2028, that she was “terminated, effective immediately” without any explanation. She sued the following day to hold onto her job.
Harris is one of three leaders on boards designed to protect federal workers whom Trump fired in February, shortly before his administration began firing probationary employees. The others were Hampton Dellinger, the recently reinstated head of the Office of Special Counsel, and Susan Grundmann, the head of the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington, D.C., ruled that the government wasn't arguing Harris was inefficient because the board had a backlog of about 3,800 cases but cleared nearly 99% of them by January 2025. The judge cited Supreme Court precedent that Trump couldn't remove Harris without good reason.
"In other words, the statute does not provide room for executive discretion − the President has no menu of options to pick from" and "he categorically may not remove Harris without cause," Contreras wrote in summary judgment, without needing a full trial.
"Because the President did not indicate that he sought to remove Harris for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office, his attempt to terminate her was unlawful and exceeded the scope of his authority," the judge wrote.
Harris joined the three-member board in June 2022 and was due to serve until March 2028. But on Feb. 10, she received a one-sentence email from Trent Morse, deputy assistant to the president, that said: “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position on the Merit Systems Protection Board is terminated, effective immediately.”
"I am fighting this to protect against the dismantling of the federal agencies who ward against corruption, grift, and political interference with the civil service," Harris said in a statement about her lawsuit.
Government lawyers argued that the president has the power to remove any employee in the executive branch, and the American public deserves to have a Merit Systems Protection Board with members the president trusts.
“That executive power encompasses the authority to remove those who aid the President in carrying out his duties,” government lawyers wrote in a legal filing.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement before the judge's ruling that Trump "has every right to exercise his executive authority on behalf of the American people."
The lawsuit is one of several challenging Trump’s orders to reduce the federal workforce − and remove specific officials – involving board members who hear workforce disputes.
The Merit Systems Protection Board on Feb. 25 paused the terminations of six employees at six agencies who sued, saying their firings were illegal. That pause will last 45 days while Dellinger investigates.
With Harris reinstated, the Merit Systems Protection Board now has one Democrat and one Republican in place. Both will need to show up to constitute a quorum because the third member, Democrat Ray Limon, completed his term last week. The board went without a quorum for years during Trump’s first term leading to a backlog of thousands of cases.
Unions are challenging Trump’s buyout offer which 75,000 workers have signed up for. Workers are fighting the dismantling of specific agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. And several individuals, including Gwynne Wilcox, who was fired from the National Labor Relations Board, are fighting their own dismissals.