For nearly half a century, a little-known agency has stood between federal workers and the politics of the moment. Now its independence is being tested as never before.
What the MSPB is, and why it matters
Congress created the Merit Systems Protection Board in 1978 as an independent check on the executive branch's power over the federal workforce. The board adjudicates appeals from the roughly two million federal civilian employees who believe they were fired, demoted or disciplined unlawfully. Its members are protected by statute from being removed except for cause — a structural guarantee meant to insulate the board from political pressure. In practice it functions less like a policy agency than a specialized court: it weighs evidence, applies civil-service law and issues rulings that bind federal departments.
What is alleged
The New York Times reported on June 28 that the White House had privately sought to influence the board during a period of sweeping workforce reductions. The Herald could not independently verify the specific private contacts the Times described. But a series of public, documented actions tells a parallel story.
In February 2025, President Trump removed the board's Democratic chair, Cathy Harris, nearly three years before her term was set to expire, offering no public cause. A federal district court initially called the firing unlawful, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld it, holding that Congress cannot bar the president from removing board members. Harris has appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing the board is a "purely adjudicative" body entitled to special protection.
Trump also issued an executive order declaring that the president's and the attorney general's interpretations of law are "controlling on all employees," a directive that legal scholars at Lawfare said effectively subordinated independent agencies to White House legal edicts. The Justice Department went further in at least one board proceeding, arguing that Office of Legal Counsel opinions are "binding legal advice" the board must follow.
Stripping the board's jurisdiction
In February 2026, the Office of Personnel Management proposed a rule that would transfer the board's authority over layoff appeals to OPM itself — an agency that answers to the president — and curtail its power over probationary firings. OPM cast the change as replacing "a slow, costly process with a single, streamlined review." The American Federation of Government Employees warned it could "trigger mass federal worker firings" by removing the independent check.
Meanwhile the board itself, now reshaped under the administration, overturned decades of precedent in March 2026 by accepting that some workers — including two fired immigration judges — fall outside its protection under Article II of the Constitution. One employment lawyer called the shift "a complete 180" from the board's historical posture.
The scale, and the response
The stakes are large. The administration forced out roughly 317,000 federal employees in its first year, and the board's caseload surged 266 percent in the 2025 fiscal year. The board lacked a quorum from March to October 2025, unable to resolve appeals at all; since then, a wave of member recusals has left a large share of pending cases without full review, with deadlocks automatically affirming the lower ruling.
The White House and OPM frame the changes as modernizing a sluggish bureaucracy and ensuring employees do not "subvert presidential directives," citing the president's broad authority to run the executive branch. Senate Democrats have urged the Supreme Court to reinstate Harris, warning that stripping removal protections from adjudicators could reach bodies like the Tax Court. In a sign the legal questions remain unsettled, the full D.C. Circuit agreed in June 2026 to hear, en banc, a case directly challenging the administration's firing rationale.
