Justice Department Files Complaint Against Board Members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Accused of Usurping Office

By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

On Tuesday the Justice Department filed a writ of Quo Warranto against three individuals having served as board members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting who were fired by President Trump yet allegedly continued to hold and exercise their office.

The complaint states “[s]ince April 28, 2025, Defendants Laura G. Ross, Thomas E. Rothman, and Diane Kaplan have been usurping and purporting to exercise unlawfully the office of board member of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (the “CPB”)… President Donald J. Trump lawfully removed each Defendant from office on April 28, 2025. As recent Supreme Court orders have recognized, the President cannot meaningfully exercise his executive power under Article II of the Constitution without the power to select—and, when necessary, remove—those who hold federal office. Personnel is policy, after all.”

According to Defendants, they “received an email from Trent Morse, the Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel for the Executive Office of the President, purporting to notify the board members that their positions on the Board of Directors for CPB were terminated… The Correspondence stated, in full:

‘On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.’”

Immediately after President Trump’s effort to remove the board members from their positions, the three “immediately sought a preliminary injunction against the president and other officials, seeking to enjoin the government from completing their firing. See Corp. for Pub. Broad. v. Trump, Civ. A. No. 25-1305 (RDM) (D.D.C. Apr. 29, 2025). Their effort was unsuccessful as the court held that their claim the president lacked authority to remove them from office was unlikely to succeed.

The Justice Department’s complaint accused the three defendants of continuing to usurp the office of Board Member of the CPB by “participating in board meetings, voting on resolutions and other business that comes before the board, and presenting themselves to the public as board members. All of this [was] manifestly unlawful.”

The board members’ original complaint, argued that the CPB was created by Congress to be “a private corporation [to] be created to facilitate the development of public telecommunications and to afford maximum protection from extraneous interference and control.” They specifically argued the following:

• CPB is not a federal agency subject to the President’s authority, but rather a private corporation. See Id. at § 396(b) (“[CPB] will not be an agency or establishment of the United States Government. The Corporation shall be subject to the provisions of this section, and, to the extent consistent with this section, to the District of Columbia Nonprofit Corporation Act.”);
• CPB’s Board members are not officers of the United States, and thus are not within the removal provisions of Article II of the Constitution. See Id. at § 396(d)(2) (“The members of the [CPB] Board shall not, by reason of such membership, be deemed to be officers or employees of the United States.”);
• CPB Board members cannot be affected, controlled, or disturbed by the actions of the government. See Id. at § 398(c) (forbidding “any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] …”);
• CPB Board members forfeit their membership in only one scenario, not present here. See Id. at § 396(e)(7) (“Members of the Board shall attend not less than 50 percent of all duly convened meetings of the Board in any calendar year. A member who fails to meet the requirement … shall forfeit membership.”);
• The Act omits the typical statutory provision when creating a federal agency that the Board members serve at the pleasure of the President.

The board members sought in their complaint declaratory relief, and alleging “Violation of the Administrative Procedure Act Not in Accordance with Law/In Excess of Statutory Authority, Violation of Separation of Powers/Ultra Vires Presidential Action, Violation of the Presentment, Appropriations, and Take Care Clauses.” They also sought relief in having the court declare the e-mail terminating their position to have no legal effect and a temporary restraining order “prohibiting the Defendants from taking any action which gives effect to the Correspondence or otherwise seeks to interfere with or control the governance and operations of CPB” along with legal fees and any other relief the court might grant.

In its quo warranto filing, the Justice Department countered, “Although the Public Broadcasting Act provides that “[t]he members of the Board shall not, by reason of such membership, be deemed to be officers or employees of the United States,” 47 U.S.C. § 396(d)(2), and that the CPB “will not be an agency or establishment of the United States Government,” id. § 396(b), the Act and other statutes provide many levers of government control and influence over the CPB:

[in partial list for brevity]

• As noted above, all CPB board members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Id. § 396(c)(1).
• Congress set forth specific qualifications for board members, including that no more than 5 members will be of the same political party, that board members must be “eminent in” relevant fields, and that the Board contain members who represent licensees and permittees of public television stations and public radio stations. Id. § 396(c)(1)-(3).
• Congress restricted the compensation of CPB officers and employees based on a federal employee pay scale. Id. § 396(e)(1).
• Congress authorized the CPB to take various actions “[i]n order to achieve the objectives and to carry out the purposes of” the Act. Id. § 396(g); see also id. § 396(a) (listing those objectives and purposes). The CPB funds “public telecommunications . . . programs,” assists “in the development . . . of interconnection systems” and “public telecommunication entities.” 47 U.S.C. § 396(g)(1). And the CPB is empowered to make grants, hire staff, make payments, and to “take any other actions” necessary to support its congressional purposes. Id. § 396(g)(2). Congress also “prohibited” the CPB from owning or operating broadcast stations or producing its own programming. Id. § 396(g)(3).
  The CPB is primarily funded through annual Congressional appropriations. Id. § 396(k)(1). For example, in 2024, Congress appropriated $535 million to the CPB for fiscal year 2026. See Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024, Pub. L. No. 118-47, 138 Stat. 460, 696, § 407.
• […]
• Congress imposed various requirements on recipients of grants from the CPB, including that they hold open meetings, that public broadcast station grant recipients establish a community advisory board, and that employees of the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio cannot “be compensated in excess of reasonable compensation” while those organizations receive grants. Id. § 396(k)(4), (8), (9).
• […]
• The CPB is a “designated Federal entity” under the Inspector General Act, 5 U.S.C. § 415(a)(1)(A), which means it has an Inspector General who conducts investigations and audits of CPB operations and issues reports to Congress, the CPB Board and management, and the public, see Office of the Inspector General, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, https://perma.cc/AAD4-G5DL (the CPB’s Office of the Inspector General “conduct[s] independent audits, evaluations, and investigations” and “report[s] to Congress and the public about our activities”).
• Congress holds oversight hearings regarding the CPB. See, e.g., House Committee on Energy & Commerce, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Hearing: “Examining Accusations of Ideological Bias at NPR, a Taxpayer Funded News Entity,” https://perma.cc/W284-W8GW (May 8, 2024).

Specific allegations against the board members, state the three held board meetings on May 2nd, 13th and June 10th and 11th where they voted in their official capacity, adopted resolutions, and acted as if the preliminary injunction they sought had been held in their favor. Also the President under his Article II powers has:

“[a]mple authority, both longstanding and recent, [to] establish that the power to appoint someone to a position presumptively carries with it the incident power of removal, absent a clear restriction on that removal authority. “ citing also Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corp., 513 U.S. 374 (1995). The Supreme Court held that the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (commonly known as Amtrak) was “an agency or instrumentality of the United States for the purpose of individual rights guaranteed against the Government by the Constitution,” even though the federal statute creating Amtrak structured it as a corporation and provided that Amtrak would not be a government agency. The Supreme Court held “that where, as here, the Government creates a corporation by special law, for the furtherance of governmental objectives, and retains for itself permanent authority to appoint a majority of the directors of that corporation, the corporation is part of the Government for purposes of the First Amendment. Lebron involved a First Amendment claim, but the Supreme Court later applied similar analysis to hold that Amtrak is also “a governmental entity for purposes of the Constitution’s separation of powers provisions.” Dep’t of Transp. v. Ass’n of Am. R.Rs., 575 U.S.43, 53-54 (2015).”

The government requested the court “enter judgment that Defendants “be ousted and excluded” from the office of board member of the CPB. The Court should also grant appropriate ancillary relief, including return of any salary or payment Defendants have unlawfully taken by virtue of their usurpation of office” and that any official actions taken by the Defendants since their termination be nullified

Judge Randolph Moss of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, who presides over both the Board Member’s and the Justice Department’s complaints found it  “difficult to fathom that Congress intended to provide the members of the Corporation’s Board with essentially irrevocable tenure.”

By Darren Smith

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