WASHINGTON— A federal judge refused on Wednesday to reinstate eight former inspectors general who filed a lawsuit after the Trump administration fired them with no warning and little explanation.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said that while President Donald Trump likely violated the federal law governing the process for removing the non-partisan watchdogs from office, the firings didn’t cause enough irreparable harm to justify reinstating the watchdogs before the lawsuit is resolved.
The eight plaintiffs were among 17 inspectors general who were fired by Trump on Jan. 24. Each received identical two-sentence emails from the White House that attributed their removal to unspecified “changing priorities.” The mass firings targeted all but two of the cabinet agencies’ inspectors general.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said the firings were unlawful because the administration didn’t give Congress the legally required 30-day notice or provide a “substantive, case-specific rationale” for removing them.
Government attorneys said the president can remove inspectors general “ without any showing of cause ” and doesn’t have to wait 30 days after providing notice to Congress.
The judge noted that even if the inspectors general were reinstated, Trump could simply give notice to Congress and have them removed from their positions 30 days later.
Inspectors general are responsible for rooting out waste and fraud in federal agencies. They are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Reyes said the inspectors general had provided “exceptional service as IGs, marked by decades of distinguished leadership across multiple administrations.”
“They deserved better from their government. They still do,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, this Court cannot provide Plaintiffs more.”
Reyes said the plaintiffs can be legally compensated later if they win their lawsuit, but in the meantime, their removals would stand.
The plaintiffs were inspectors general at the Small Business Administration and the departments of Defense, State, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education and Labor. Their attorneys say work by inspectors general in 2023 alone saved more than $90 billion in taxpayer dollars.
Neither the White House nor the attorney representing the inspectors general immediately responded to requests for comment.
“Defendants’ actions, moreover, telegraph to the public that many of the largest federal agencies now lack the institutional mechanisms to detect and stop fraud and abuse (or at a minimum those mechanisms have been greatly weakened), which will likely engender wrongdoing that could harm the public,” plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote.
Justice Department lawyers said a federal law authorizes the president’s authority to remove inspectors general “at any time and with no preconditions.”
“The congressional notice provision is in a separate sentence from the removal authorization provision, with no grammatical connection between them,” they wrote.
During a March 27 hearing, Reyes said she genuinely didn’t know how she would rule on their requests for reinstatement. But she thanked the plaintiffs for “standing up and saying this is not acceptable.”
In Wednesday’s ruling, Reyes made it clear that she believes the firings violated the Inspector General Act. But she also questioned whether Congress has the right to limit the President’s power to remove inspectors general.
“This is a close call under the best of circumstances,” Reyes said. Case law shows Congress can give tenure protections to “inferior officers with narrowly defined duties,” but those protections do not extend to principal officers who wield significant power on their own.
“IGs do not fit cleanly into either category,” she wrote.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, nominated Reyes to the bench. She has decided other cases challenging Trump’s executive orders, including one in which she blocked the Republican president’s administration from banning transgender people from military service.
