A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration unlawfully dismissed a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, ordering her indefinite reinstatement.
United States District Judge Rudolph Contreras, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, found that Cathy Harris, who chaired the three-member board during the Biden administration, was wrongfully removed. In his 35-page ruling, Contreras determined that federal law protects MSPB members from being fired without specific cause, making her termination “illegal.”
“The President’s attempt to terminate Harris was unlawful,” Contreras wrote in his decision, which indefinitely restores her position. His order ensures Harris retains all authority and benefits associated with her role while preventing the administration from installing a replacement, so long as President Donald Trump’s administration continues not to follow standard “removal provisions,” which would include documented evidence to justify her firing.
Harris was abruptly dismissed last month through a brief email from the Presidential Personnel Office despite having four years left in her seven-year term. Under federal law, MSPB members can only be removed for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Contreras ruled that Harris remains entitled to her position unless one of those conditions is met.
During a hearing Monday, Justice Department attorney Jeremy Newman defended the administration’s stance, arguing that the Constitution grants the president broad authority over executive branch personnel decisions, including removals.
“Reinstatement of a removed federal official is not such a remedy,” Newman said, pointing to the administration’s interpretations of the Supreme Court’s precedent.
Harris’s lawyer, Nathaniel Zelinsky, countered by warning that the government’s argument effectively gives the president unchecked power to dismiss officials across the executive branch, regardless of congressional safeguards.
Zelinsky theorizes that, if unchecked, the “President tomorrow can fire every single person in the Executive Branch, and Congress, which has always had the authority to restrict removal, can do absolutely nothing about it. That is not the law.”
Contreras rejected the administration’s legal justification, pointing to Supreme Court precedent that allows Congress to establish term limits and removal conditions for independent agencies such as the MSPB.
“The President thus lacks the power to remove Harris from office at will,” Contreras wrote, noting that Trump had not cited the legally required grounds of inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance to justify her firing.
Harris’s case is one of several current legal challenges against the Trump administration’s removal of officials with statutory protections. Similar lawsuits have been filed by other dismissed agency heads, including the former director of the Office of Special Counsel and Democratic appointees to the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
Trump’s DOJ argues that the president must have the power to remove MSPB members at will, but Harris’s legal team contends that her dismissal violates long-standing precedent requiring cause for removal. In earlier proceedings, Contreras pointed to Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 Supreme Court decision that limits presidential power over independent agency officials, writing that Trump “did not indicate” a legally sufficient reason for Harris’s removal.
In a related case, another federal judge ruled Saturday that the administration unlawfully fired OSC Director Hampton Dellinger, a decision the DOJ has already appealed. That case has reached the Supreme Court, which declined to intervene immediately but is expected to take it up again soon.
Conservative legal scholars see both the Harris and the Dellinger cases as ripe opportunities for the high court to revisit Humphrey’s Executor and a bid to undo the long-standing precedent that creates roadblocks to the president removing federal officials at will.
JUDGE REINSTATES MERIT SYSTEMS PROTECTION BOARD CHAIRWOMAN FIRED BY TRUMP
Justice Neil Gorsuch, dissenting from the majority decision to punt on the Dellinger case when it reached the chambers last month, wrote on Feb. 21 that he would have vacated the district court’s ruling for Dellinger and remand it back “with instructions to consider the boundaries of traditional equitable relief.”
Toward the end of Monday’s hearing, Contreras acknowledged that Harris’s case is also likely headed for higher court review.