A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from firing Cathy Harris, the chair of an independent board that protects government workers from political discrimination and unfair labor practices, including wrongful termination.
The order was the second time a judge had sided with a government watchdog who sued to prevent their own removal. Lawsuits challenging President Trump’s ability to reshape entire agencies and traditionally independent panels have advanced all the way to the Supreme Court, providing an early test of courts’ willingness to check the president’s ambitions.
Judge Rudolph Contreras, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said that Ms. Harris should retain her position, citing a raft of Supreme Court cases as precedent.
The board’s “mission and purpose require independence,” he wrote, adding that such independence “would evaporate if the president could terminate its members without cause, even if a court could later order them reinstated.”
The ruling was handed down as the Supreme Court was deliberating in a similar case involving Hampton Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency tasked with investigating whistle-blower complaints and allegations of wrongdoing in the federal government. Mr. Dellinger was fired by the Trump administration on Feb. 7, but courts have so far stepped in to keep him in that post.
Ms. Harris, a government lawyer on the Merit Systems Protection Board, was fired by Mr. Trump earlier this year. She sued, arguing that her removal was politically motivated. The law creating the board envisioned it as a nonpartisan body, with three members serving staggered seven-year terms, in order to give different administrations the opportunity to shape its makeup.