Federal judge rules against Trump in suit filed by ousted FOMB members

By THE STAR STAFF

A U.S. District Court judge in Puerto Rico has blocked the Trump administration from removing members from the Financial Oversight and Management Board because the White House has not provided just cause.

Judge María Antongiorgi-Jordan ruled on Friday that three members of Puerto Rico’s financial oversight board were never properly removed from office by the White House and prohibited government officials from taking any steps to make their terminations effective.

The Trump administration fired all but one of the seven FOMB members in August. Arthur J. Gonzalez, Andrew G. Biggs, and Betty A. Rosa sued to have their dismissals reversed.

The Trump administration tried to put forward arguments for why it had not violated the good-cause requirements of PROMESA, including the fact that Trump’s Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel sent the fired board members a letter after the lawsuit was filed accusing them of “inefficiency, ineffectiveness, neglect, and failure to advance the statutory mission of the Oversight Board.”

The letter, which was attached as an exhibit to a motion submitted September 27 by the plaintiffs, said the President’s decision to remove six of the FOMB’s members was driven by concerns that the Oversight Board has made little progress in resolving the economic crisis of the US territory, particularly regarding the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which remains in bankruptcy and continues to struggle with reliability issues.

But Antongiorgi-Jordan was not convinced

“The Supreme Court has indicated that where Congress provides that a federal officer may be removed only for cause, ‘the officer is entitled to notice and a hearing,’” she wrote. “This is because where a statute provides that an official may be removed only ‘for cause,’ that suggests that Congress intended to place the decision to remove that official beyond the unlimited discretion of one actor.”