Member of US government employee appeals board sues over Trump firing

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) - A Democrat who served at the U.S. agency that hears appeals by federal government employees when they are fired or disciplined has filed a lawsuit challenging Republican U.S. President Donald Trump's attempt to fire her.

The lawsuit by Cathy Harris, who the president tried to fire from the Merit Systems Protection Board on Monday, marked the latest instance of an official with an independent agency going to court after Trump said he was axing them.

Trump on Monday also removed another Democratic member, Ray Limon, from his position as the board's vice chair. Harris is asking a federal judge in Washington to issue an emergency temporary restraining order reinstating her.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Harris, who was appointed to the board in 2022 by Trump's Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, until recently was its chair. Trump named Henry Kerner, a Republican, as the board's acting chair upon returning to the White House on January 20.

Federal workers who lose their jobs can bring a challenge before the board, an independent three-member panel, seeking to be reinstated. The board's decisions are binding unless they are set aside by a federal appeals court.

That could put the board in a central spot as Trump moves swiftly to shrink the government workforce.

Trump on Tuesday ordered U.S. agencies to work closely with billionaire adviser Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to identify government employees who could be laid off and functions that can be eliminated entirely.

Merit Systems Protection Board members serve seven-year terms. Harris' lawsuit noted that under a federal statute, they can only be removed "for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."

She argued that Trump's decision to fire her, communicated in a one-sentence email, was unlawful and contravened nearly a century of legal precedent dictating the standard for removal of independent agency officials.

She cited a key 1935 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that has limited a president's ability to fire certain agency heads. Some of the current justices on the 6-3 conservative-majority court have signaled a willingness to rein in or perhaps overturn that ruling, in a case called Humphrey's Executor v. United States.

The case mirrors a lawsuit filed last week by Gwynne Wilcox, a Democrat who Trump fired from her position on the National Labor Relations Board.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Hugh Lawson)