A federal judge in Washington on Tuesday issued an order to reinstate the chairwoman of an appeals board and said she can remain in her position until the end of her term, after she was fired by the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled to re-appoint Cathy Harris, the chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and that she “shall continue to serve as a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board until her term expires … unless she is earlier removed for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office under” Title 5 of the U.S. Code.
Members of the Trump administration, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Office of Budget and Management Director Russell Vought, cannot remove Harris from office “without cause or in any way treating her as having been removed without cause,” the judge wrote, adding they also cannot deny her “access to any of the benefits or resources of her office.”
In a separate memorandum issued Tuesday, Contreras wrote that President Donald Trump’s “attempt to terminate Harris was unlawful” and said that federal law bars the president from removing members of the MSPB without appropriate cause for doing so.
The board that she chairs, according to its website, was set up to protect federal employees from prohibited personnel practices and is an “independent, quasi-judicial” entity within the executive branch.
Lawyers for the Trump administration, in court papers filed last week, argued that as president, Trump has the power to remove any official under the executive branch.
“The MSPB wields executive power and must be accountable to the President through the removal power,” the court papers said, adding that it “can order relief including reinstatement, backpay, and attorney’s fees” as an entity under the executive branch.
Further, they argued that the board “can also exercise authority over other executive agencies by, for example, reviewing rules of the Office of Personnel Management” and potentially has “broad authority to affect management of the Executive Branch workforce.”
Trump terminated Harris, a Democrat, on Feb. 10. Her term was scheduled to run until 2028.
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