Dozens of fired Justice Department lawyers are fighting their dismissals in court, part of a growing tsunami of legal cases arising from the Trump administration’s quest to slash the size of the government and rein in what the president and his advisers call the “deep state.”
In just three months in office, the Trump administration has carried out mass firings across the government, provoking court battles over the parameters of executive power. At the Justice Department, the dismissals have been far more targeted, going after senior career officials who have served in administrations of both parties, as well as prosecutors who worked on investigations of President Trump and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
More than four dozen former Justice Department employees are appealing their dismissals to administrative judges — in what some experts in employment law consider a crucial new test of long-established law that may ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court.
Last week, Adam Schleifer, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who was abruptly fired last month, filed legal papers challenging his dismissal. Mr. Schleifer, who handled white-collar investigations, was informed of his ouster by a brief email from the White House — an unheard-of circumstance for generations of Justice Department lawyers.
Former federal employees seeking to fight their dismissals must first file appeals with the Merit Systems Protection Board, where administrative judges weigh the reasons for the firings before issuing rulings. Those rulings, however, can be appealed to federal courts in Washington.
The merit board’s mission is to uphold civil service protections, which are intended to ensure competence and fairness in government. Federal case law has long held that civil servants may not be fired for partisan reasons, for blowing the whistle on misconduct or simply to clear out positions to fill with loyalists. The Trump administration is now testing those precedents and principles.
In a typical year, there are about 5,000 such appeals filed by fired or disciplined federal workers. This year, there have already been more than 10,000, and thousands more are expected. The spike in cases is a direct product of the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to push the limits of employment law, raising concerns among employment lawyers that the system will be swamped by a wave of litigation.
Mr. Schleifer was targeted by a far-right activist named Laura Loomer, who branded him a “Biden holdover” on social media because five years ago he had run for office as a Democrat. After losing that campaign, Mr. Schleifer returned to the Justice Department as a career prosecutor.
In his appeal, Mr. Schleifer said he was given no reason for his dismissal, and he highlighted how unusual it was for a line prosecutor to be fired by a White House official.
The same filing did note, however, that shortly before his dismissal, lawyers for a defendant he was prosecuting — Andrew Wiederhorn, the founder of Fatburger — argued that he should be removed from the case because his work reflected a “woke” and “Biden” bias.
Mr. Schleifer argued in his filing that his dismissal the same month set a damaging precedent. A firing, the filing stated, “for unprecedented partisan and political reasons also undermines a bedrock principle of our system of justice: that the federal prosecutor is not a partisan political actor, but has a duty to prosecute without fear or favor.”
In another closely watched case, the Justice Department is seeking to consolidate the appeals of a number of fired senior Justice Department officials. Those include Elizabeth G. Oyer, who was dismissed as the department’s pardon attorney shortly after resisting pressure from above to restore gun ownership rights to the actor Mel Gibson, a prominent supporter of Mr. Trump.
Ms. Oyer has said she was retaliated against for taking a principled position, making her a whistle-blower of wrongdoing within the department. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, has denied her claims.
In Ms. Oyer’s case, the department is arguing she was fired along with several other senior officials on the same day, and therefore all of their appeals should be grouped together.
“These cases invoke almost identical factual scenarios and issues of law,” a lawyer for the Justice Department, Eric Daniels, wrote in a court filing that also asked for the proceedings to be halted while the judge considers their request.
In an interview, Ms. Oyer denounced what she called a stalling tactic. “The Justice Department is trying to run out the clock,” she said. “They are using tactics that appear intended to delay the proceeding as much as possible and avoid providing any meaningful information.”
While the people pressing these cases are fighting for their jobs, their careers and their reputations, the cases could have significant consequences for the Justice Department and the country, Ms. Oyer said.
The department’s political leaders “are trying to clear the way to install political loyalists throughout the department by firing the career experts who are standing in the way of their political agenda, and they’re doing it in a manner that is plainly in violation of federal civil service laws,” she said. “If they are able to get away with that, they are going to eliminate all of the career experts in the department who have deep knowledge about critical issues that are facing the department and our nation.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
