Attorney General Charity Clark today joined a coalition of 23 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in support of Cathy A. Harris, a member of the federal Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) who President Donald Trump has attempted to unlawfully remove from office. The MSPB is an independent agency with legal protections against political interference. The amicus brief, in the case Harris v. Bessent, was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The MSPB is a congressionally created independent agency consisting of three members and is charged with protecting merit system principles and adjudicating conflicts between federal workers and their employing agencies. Federal law expressly provides that a member of the MSPB may only be removed from office for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Yet on February 10, 2025, President Trump purportedly terminated Harris from her position on the MSPB “effective immediately” without providing any reason for the action.
Harris successfully sued the Trump Administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, obtaining a permanent injunction declaring that she remains a member of the MSPB. The Trump Administration appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Attorney General Clark and the coalition filed their amicus brief in support of Harris and against the Trump Administration’s continued political assault against independent agencies established by law.
As Attorney General Clark emphasized in the coalition’s amicus brief, one of the key aspects of the merit principles protecting civil servants, which MSPB enforces, is the protection of federal employees against “arbitrary action, personal favoritism, or coercion for political purposes.” That is why it is necessary for the MSPB to have a degree of political independence, and why the members of the MSPB are granted protections against removal. The states of this nation rely on the ability of independent agencies, such as the MSPB, to fairly and impartially carry out their congressionally mandated functions, and blatant political interference with a board’s composition undermines the entire merit system upon which the government’s civil service is based.
Joining Attorney General Clark on the brief are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaiʻi, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.
The brief is available to read here.
CONTACT: Amelia Vath, Outreach and Communications Coordinator, 802-828-3171