D.C. Federal Court Rules Termination of Democrat PCLOB Members Is Unlawful

On May 21, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that two Democrat members of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (“PCLOB”) were unlawfully terminated by President Trump.

The plaintiffs, Travis LeBlanc and Edward Felten, argued in their complaint against the PCLOB and others that the termination by the President of their positions on the PCLOB violated federal law and the U.S. Constitution. The court concluded that Congress intended to restrict the President’s power to remove PCLOB members, the restriction as applied to the plaintiffs is constitutional, and the plaintiffs’ required relief is appropriate. Accordingly, the court granted plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and denied the defendants’ cross-motion for summary judgment.

In reaching its conclusion, the court reasoned:

In response to the 9/11 Commission Report, Congress created an independent, multimember board of experts and tasked its members with the weighty job of overseeing the government’s counterterrorism actions and policies, and recommending changes to ensure that those actions and policies adequately protect privacy and civil liberties interests. And, as the Court has now concluded, that responsibility is incompatible with at-will removal by the President, because such unfettered authority would make the Board and its members beholden to the very authority it is supposed to oversee on behalf of Congress and the American people. To hold otherwise would be to bless the President’s obvious attempt to exercise power beyond that granted to him by the Constitution and shield the Executive Branch’s counterterrorism actions from independent oversight, public scrutiny, and bipartisan congressional insight regarding those actions.  And, when the President contravenes a statutory scheme designed by Congress to ensure that these interests are adequately protected, it is specifically the “province and duty” of the independent Judiciary to “say what the law is.”