A former assistant U.S. attorney and two other former Justice Department employees urged a Washington, D.C., federal court on Tuesday to deny the government’s motion to dismiss their lawsuit challenging their terminations, arguing that an internal federal employment board is neither appropriate nor independent enough to hear their claims.
Former AUSA Michael Gordon, who prosecuted cases connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, is joined in the litigation by Joseph W. Tirrell, the former director of the Justice Department’s Departmental Ethics Office, and Patricia A. Hartman, a former supervisory public affairs specialist in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
The government has argued that the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board is the proper forum for the trio’s claims, but the plaintiffs countered in a filing Tuesday that President Donald Trump has used his authority to fire MSPB members, remove an MSPB administrative judge, and direct the board and its judges on how federal law should be construed.
According to the filing, the government is now attempting to force their constitutional claims “before the very agency he now controls — the MSPB.”
The former employees argued that neither the Civil Service Reform Act, the federal law governing the civil service, nor any other statute strips federal courts of jurisdiction over all federal employee termination cases.
“Rather, defendants rely on a set of decisions that found congressional intent to ‘channel’ all such claims to the MSPB implicit in the CSRA,” the plaintiffs said.
They argued that reliance is misplaced.
“One, the central rationale of the prior decisions no longer applies given the radical changes that have occurred in the position and status of the MSPB since January 2025,” the filing stated.
The plaintiffs also argued that the government has itself claimed the CSRA is unconstitutional as applied to the president and department heads, meaning Congress could not have intended cases like theirs to be decided by the MSPB.
Gordon filed the lawsuit in July alongside Tirrell and Hartman, challenging their terminations, which they said were delivered through “one-page memoranda” from Attorney General Pam Bondi stating they “were summarily removed from federal service pursuant to Article II of the United States Constitution and the laws of the United States.”
The plaintiffs said they were fired without just cause or the required due process. Gordon received his notice on June 27, Hartman on July 7, and Tirrell on July 11.
According to the suit, Bondi’s actions ignored “long-standing statutory and regulatory protections that govern how and when members of the civil service can be terminated.”
“The attorney general does not have absolute authority to simply remove DOJ employees,” the complaint said. “Specifically, there are crucial guardrails that protect employees from arbitrary or unlawful termination.”
Gordon was terminated the same day as two other assistant U.S. attorneys who had previously worked on January 6 prosecutions, which the plaintiffs argue shows retaliation for work the government “perceived as politically affiliated.”
The three former DOJ employees accused Bondi and the department of violating the Administrative Procedure Act and their Fifth Amendment due process rights. They are seeking reinstatement, back pay, other monetary relief, and legal costs.
In its motion to dismiss filed in November, the government argued that the court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case because the plaintiffs can appeal their removals to the MSPB.
“Per the CSRA’s careful design, the MSPB adjudicates covered claims of improper personnel action in the first instance, and parties dissatisfied with the outcome of that adjudication may seek Article III review primarily in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit,” the government said.
Representatives for Gordon, Hartman, Tirrell, and the Justice Department did not immediately respond Tuesday to requests for comment.
Gordon, Hartman, and Tirrell are represented by Abbe David Lowell, David A. Kolansky, and Isabella M. Oishi of Lowell & Associates PLLC; Harold Craig Becker and Norman L. Eisen of Democracy Defenders Fund; Mark S. Zaid and Bradley P. Moss of the Law Offices of Mark S. Zaid PC; and Heidi Burakiewicz of Burakiewicz & DePriest.
The Executive Office of the President, Bondi, the Justice Department, and the government are represented by Cesar Azrak of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, Federal Programs Branch.
The case is Michael Gordon et al. v. Executive Office of the President et al., Case No. 1:25-cv-02409, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
