A federal judge on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump from firing the chair of an agency that protects the rights of government workers, saying the official’s efforts to get her job reinstated were likely to succeed.
Cathy Harris, who headed up the Merit Systems Protection Board, or MSPB, received an email from the Trump administration last Monday saying she was being removed from her position. Harris, a Democratic member of the board whose term was supposed to run into 2028, said her firing was illegal and quickly filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement.
In the Tuesday order, Judge Rudolph Contreras of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said it was in the public’s interest to block Harris’ removal with a temporary restraining order as her case makes its way through court. Not letting her challenge her own firing would cause “irreparable harm,” he wrote.
The MSPB hears appeals from federal workers who believe they have been wrongly disciplined or fired. The small, little-known agency is taking on outsize importance as the Trump administration swings a wrecking ball at the federal workforce, firing probationary employees en masse in what unions have called an illegal purge that violates due process.
“Were the President able to displace independent agency heads from their positions for the length of litigation such as this, those officials’ independence would shatter”
- Judge Rudolph Contreras
Many of those workers would need to take their cases to the MSPB — an agency that Trump appears to be trying to weaken or deadlock. The independent body typically has three members who serve 7-year terms and have the power to overrule federal employee firings.
The administration gave no explanation for firing Harris, according to a copy of her termination notice HuffPost received through a public records request.
“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,” wrote Trent Morse, Trump’s deputy director of personnel.
If Harris’ removal at the MSPB were to stand, the board would have just one Democrat and one Republican until Trump managed to install a third, presumably Republican member.
Contreras, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, sounded an alarm over letting the president exert “direct political control” over what should be an independent body.
Doing so would “neuter” the “statutory scheme” that Congress created to govern labor relations in the federal workforce, Contreras wrote, and allow “high-ranking government officials to engage in prohibited practices and then pressure the MSPB into inaction.”
In other words, it would let political actors violate employee rights, and then make sure nothing could be done about it.
Trump has tried to exert unprecedented control over independent agencies like the MSPB that oversee the federal workplace. In addition to firing Harris, he also fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, which protects federal whistleblowers, and the chairwoman of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which enforces collective-bargaining rights.
Such firings violate a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent that limits the president’s power to remove officials at independent, quasi-judicial agencies — a precedent that the administration is clearly seeking to overturn.
Contreras said it was important to reinstate Harris while those questions were being litigated.
“Were the President able to displace independent agency heads from their positions for the length of litigation such as this, those officials’ independence would shatter,” he wrote.