/>iOn April 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a ruling temporarily reinstating Cathy A. Harris, who leads the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), after the Trump administration fired her without cause in February. The court voted 7-4 to vacate an earlier ruling from a three-judge panel on the court which had upheld the firing.
“The DC Circuit has followed the law and has prevented the President of the United States from undermining the entire civil service,” said whistleblower attorney Stephen M. Kohn, founding partner of Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto and Chairman of the Board of National Whistleblower Center. “If the president’s decision to terminate Cathy Harris was upheld the MSPB would have lost its quorum and would have been unable to issue relief to the millions of civil servants protected under civil law.”
“Every federal employee would have been at risk of being illegally fired with no effective recourse if President Trump delayed or failed to nominate a successor and the U.S. Senate delayed or failed to approve the nomination,” Kohn continued. “The MSPB has exclusive jurisdiction over the majority of civil servants. Whistleblowers would be most at risk. Whistleblowers and anyone who dared to blow the whistle would be at risk for summary and illegal discharge.”
President Trump fired Cathy Harris on February 10 without cause. Under federal law, members of the MSPB may be removed from office “only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” According to the DC Circuit, while the Supreme Court has found certain laws with removal protections unconstitutional, it “has repeatedly stated that it was not overturning the precedent established in Humphrey’s Executor and Wiener for multimember adjudicatory bodies.”
If Harris is removed from her post, the MPSB would be without the two members needed for a quorum. The MSPB, a quasi-judicial agency, is the sole venue to adjudicate whistleblower complaints and anti-retaliation claims brought by federal employees. For a period of five years from 2017 through 2022, the MSPB lacked a quorum, meaning they were unable to issue final rulings in whistleblower retaliation cases. By the time quorum was established, the Board faced a backlog of over 3,500 cases.
On March 26, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the Congressional Whistleblower Protection Act of 2025. The bill strengthens protections for federal employee whistleblowers who make disclosures to Congress, expanding the types of whistleblowers covered and granting them the right to have their case heard in federal court if there are delays in administrative proceedings. Under the bill, a federal employee whistleblower may seek relief in federal court if corrective action is not reached within 180 days of filing a complaint to the MSPB.
