A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from firing two Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on Wednesday.
Trump fired all three Democratic members of the five-person board in February, resulting in two of them filing a lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton found that allowing unilateral firings would prevent the board from carrying out its purpose.
Walton wrote that allowing at-will removals would make the board ‘beholden to the very authority it is supposed to oversee on behalf of Congress and the American people.’
The oversight board was initially created by Congress to ensure that federal counterterrorism policies were in line with privacy and civil liberties law.
‘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,’ Walton wrote.
Trump’s firings left just one Republican on the board. The third Democratic member had just two days left in her term when she was removed, and she did not sue the administration.
The two plaintiffs, Travis LeBlanc and Edward Felten, argued in their lawsuit that members of the board cannot be fired without cause. Meanwhile, lawyers for Trump’s administration argued that members of other congressionally created boards do have explicit job protections, and it would therefore be wrong for Walton to create such protections where they are absent.
‘The Constitution gives President Trump the power to remove personnel who exercise his executive authority,’ White House spokesman Harrison Fields told the Associated Press. ‘The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue.’
The plaintiffs also argued that their firings left just one member on the board, a Republican, and that falls short of the quorum required for the board to function.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.