A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that President Trump broke the law when he fired members of an independent civil liberties watchdog without cause in January, ordering the reinstatement of those challenging their removals in court.
In a 71-page opinion, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia said that Mr. Trump’s dismissal of Democratic-selected members to the five-person Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was illegal.
Lawmakers, the judge wrote, clearly intended to shield board members from arbitrary removal by a president before their terms were up. He noted that Congress created the bipartisan panel to oversee government counterterrorism actions and policies on the recommendation of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“That responsibility is incompatible with at-will removal by the president, because such unfettered authority would make the board and its members beholden to the very authority it is supposed to oversee on behalf of Congress and the American people,” wrote Judge Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush.
The judge issued a permanent injunction ordering the government to let the two board members challenging their dismissals, Travis LeBlanc and Edward W. Felten, immediately return to work. In a statement, Mr. LeBlanc celebrated the outcome.
“The court’s decision is a win for privacy, a win for civil liberties, a win for independent agencies and a win for the rule of law,” Mr. LeBlanc said. “I look forward to promptly returning to the agency and continuing my service to the nation.”
The Justice Department press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the agency declined to comment.
Congress established the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to investigate national security activities that can intrude upon individual rights, like surveillance affecting Americans or the use of terrorism watch lists to subject people to extra security screening at airports.
The board has security clearances and subpoena power and is set up to have five members, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, who serve six-year terms and can stay on for another after that if no successor has been confirmed. Some members are picked by the president, and some are selected by congressional leaders of the other party.
In late January, Mr. Trump fired all three board members who had been selected by Democrats. The move was part of a larger purge of officials who exercised various forms of independence from White House control, especially those whom Congress has protected from arbitrary firings without a cause like misconduct.
The Trump administration has said it wants to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn a 1935 precedent that says Congress can enact laws that limit a president’s ability to fire certain types of officials in the executive branch. But that precedent remains binding law, Judge Walton noted, and he ruled that it covered the board members.
One of the seats was already vacant, so the firings left the agency with just one member, Beth Williams, who had been selected by Republicans. Because the agency needs at least three members to take a legal action, like endorsing an investigative report or starting a new project, it was left largely paralyzed.
One of the fired members of the board was set to depart two days later. But Mr. LeBlanc and Mr. Felten filed a lawsuit contesting the legality of their removal.
The case is complicated by the fact that Congress did not explicitly write into a statute that board members could be removed only for cause — the usual mechanism by which agencies are made independent from the White House — even though the law creating the board declares that it is an independent agency. But there has been a general understanding that all officials atop independent agencies are shielded by tenure protections.
“To hold otherwise would be to bless the president’s obvious attempt to exercise power beyond that granted to him by the Constitution and shield the executive branch’s counterterrorism actions from independent oversight, public scrutiny and bipartisan congressional insight regarding those actions,” Judge Walton wrote.
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
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