A former top official charged with overseeing employment disputes in the federal workforce tells Scripps News there is "strong evidence" that President Donald Trump's efforts to shrink the government agencies broke the law.
Since early 2022, Raymond Limon served on the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent, quasi-judicial body designed to protect career federal workers from partisan politics by allowing employees to appeal actions like suspensions and terminations.
After working in public service for nearly three decades across multiple federal offices and agencies, Limon retired on Friday and spoke exclusively with Scripps News on Tuesday about his government work and what he sees as the “unprecedented” challenges facing the workforce under Trump.
“So far, this feels like somewhat of a power grab,” Limon said of Trump’s mass employee firings. "This kind of overreach is trying to see how far he can get away with... The legal argument that Department of Justice is trying to make, if you take it to its fullest conclusion, is that every single federal employee reports to the President and can be removed by the President. And again, I don't believe that's what the statutes say. I don't believe that's what Supreme Court decisions have said.”
The MSPB: One of fired workers’ only avenues to get their jobs back
One of Limon’s last official actions while still serving on the Board was to grant an immediate stay of Trump’s firing of six probationary employees across different agencies of the government, reinstating their positions for at least 45 days while an investigation into their cases continues.
Friday’s MSPB order represented the first such reinstatement of nonpolitical federal workers dismissed by Trump during his new term, and Limon told Scripps News he sees it as instructive for how the Board may respond to the tens of thousands of other workers fired in a similar manner.
“It does look like, from media reports that I've read, that with those six employees, [their] record seems to track pretty closely to the 1000s of other probationaries who were treated similarly” Limon said. “We will see what happens next.”
Indeed, late Tuesday afternoon, the government revealed that the MSPB has formally requested the names of nearly 6,000 workers recently fired by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of an investigation into whether they, too, were illegally dismissed, and Wednesday morning issued a similar 45-day stay reinstating them in their positions.
Federal officials have thus far refused to say exactly how many probationary workers have been fired since Trump’s inauguration, though government data says the number of employees in that group who could face termination is over 200,000.
For fired federal workers, the MSPB stands as one of just a few bodies with jurisdiction to consider whether their terminations were lawful. In at least two recent federal lawsuits concerning workers fired by Trump and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, judges noted that workers had to bring their cases before the MSBP and other similar bodies — and not traditional Article III courts.
Trump’s “unlawful firing” of MSPB chairwoman
Perhaps due to the Board’s ability to adjudicate such matters, Trump tried to remove the chair of the MSPB earlier this year as well as the head of the Office of Special Counsel that investigates such cases, but was rebuffed by federal judges in both matters.
According to court records, on February 10, MSPB chairwoman Cathy Harris received an email from a White House official informing her that “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump” that her position had been “terminated, effective immediately.”
Shortly thereafter, she sued, alleging that her termination was unlawful. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., agreed and on Tuesday issued a permanent injunction barring Trump from firing Harris absent just cause.
“[T]he President’s attempt to terminate Harris was unlawful,” U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras wrote in his March 4 opinion. “[T]he MSPB’s mission and purpose require independence.... Denying independence to the Board would undermine these constitutionally sound limitations on the removal of civil servants.”
Trump similarly tried to fire Hampton Dellinger, Special Counsel in the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, a government body designed to investigate allegations of illegal employee firings and retaliation against whistleblowers. And in a March 1 opinion, a separate federal judge, Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled his firing was also illegal and ordered Dellinger reinstated.
Already, the Department of Justice has appealed both judges’ orders. Limon predicted the cases would likely make their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Importantly, the MSPB requires a minimum of two members to form a quorum and remain operational. Given Limon’s retirement, should the Supreme Court rule in favor of Trump and allow Harris’ firing, the board would effectively be frozen – unable to hear appeals or adjudicate cases.
That would be nothing new for Trump; however, as the MSPB lacked a quorum for the entirety of Trump’s first White House term, in part due to the Senate’s refusal to consider Trump’s nominees to fill vacancies on it. As a result, a backlog of nearly 4,000 piled up, something the board only neared clearing in January.
“Those cases stood and remained in a box, if you will, for over five years,” Limon noted. “That definitely had kind of an impact for employees to bring cases before the board.”
Meanwhile, upwards of 4,000 complaints before the board were filed within the last two weeks, Limon said, with many more expected as Trump’s firings continue. Another vacancy could be catastrophic for the Board’s ability to adjudicate those matters.
According to a new report from the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, an alliance of more than 200 watchdog and public interest groups, several similar federal bodies are already unable to function due to a lack of a quorum, imperiling oversight capabilities for important issues like discrimination and privacy complaints.
The Golden Rule
Limon told Scripps News that the president has legal pathways to fire workers, including MSPB members, but said the White House has thus far declined to take them – instead opting for more of a slash-and-burn approach that runs afoul of worker protection laws.
“If the President believes that one of these board members are inefficient, are neglectful, or has evidence of malfeasance, he can then use his authority to remove them for cause,” Limon said. “It's not like as if the President doesn't have authority to do that. He chooses not to use that authority, and rather just use, you know, some theory that he is above the law and doesn't need to follow that.”
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Limon also offered a full-throated defense of federal workers and the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives within the federal government that have come under fire by Trump and Republicans.
“The core in which I think we do share as federal employees is this fundamental belief in public service and that we all take an oath of office on day one to uphold the Constitution, to defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” he said. “We believe we do have a higher calling, a vocation, if you will. And that permeated everything, from every employee I worked with, whether they were from the mail room to the boardroom.”
Limon himself was targeted by the Trump administration, demoted from his vice chair position around the time the White House tried to remove Harris. Pressed on whether he was concerned about further retaliation for speaking publicly about his thoughts on these issues, he told Scripps News that’s “not something I really think about.”
“There’s kind of two questions we have to ask ourselves, and it kind of goes to as fundamental as the golden rule,” Limon said. “Number one, do you want to treat others the way that you would like to be treated? Or two, do the people with the gold make the rules?”
“That kind of simple proposition, I think, challenges us. And for me, it's the former.”
