Trump Judge Rules Against Ex-Military Board Members

Judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., including one appointed by former President Donald Trump, ruled Friday against three former Air Force Academy board members and other plaintiffs who sued President Joe Biden and administration officials after Biden removed them.

The former board members, who were Trump appointees, filed their lawsuit against Biden, the Department of Defense, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, among others, alleging their firings were unconstitutional, Newsweek reported.

The three, with three other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, also said that the firing violated "the Administrative Procedure Act and contracts" through suspending the boards' operations for several months in 2021, issuing memoranda authorizing the creation of subcommittees, and removing certain of the appellants from their board positions before their terms of service expired."

The three judges (Trump appointee Gregory Katsas, Biden appointee Bradley Garcia, and Cornelia Pillard, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama) said that the district court initially ruling against the board members "properly determined that [the] appellants lack standing to challenge the the temporary suspension and the subcommittee authorization. And appellants' removal claims — which request reinstatement to now-expired terms — are moot."

The three former board members were removed from their posts in September 2021 after they refused Biden's request to resign. The board members were given three-year terms that expired at the end of 2023.

Biden received backlash after asking the 18 members of Trump-appointed service academy boards to resign in the fall of 2021.

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who had been on the Board of Visitors to the U.S. Naval Academy and was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, claimed on social media in September 2021 that Biden was trying to terminate Trump appointees to West Point, the Air Force Academy, and the Naval Academy "instead of focusing on the stranded Americans left in Afghanistan."

But Jen Psaki, who was Biden's White House press secretary at the time, told CNN that "no one is looking to have a battle here."

"The president of the United States, just as every president and every administration and Cabinet members, have the right to appoint people they deem as qualified, as aligned with the administration's ... priorities, to these boards and to any position in the federal government," she said.