Federal Appeals Court Grants Rare En Banc Review to Challenge Trump's 'Article II' Firings of Federal Judges

The debate over presidential power often centers on the high-profile removals of cabinet secretaries or agency directors, capturing the bulk of public attention and political outrage. However, what everyone gets wrong about the current administration's reshaping of the government is where the most consequential constitutional test is actually occurring. The true battle over the limits of executive authority is unfolding over the quiet, systematic dismissals of mid-level career adjudicators—civil servants who process the daily administrative machinery of the state. In a highly unusual move that signals the gravity of this legal conflict, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has agreed to bypass its standard randomized three-judge panel. Instead, the court has granted an immediate en banc review—meaning the entire bench of active judges will hear the case simultaneously—to two former Justice Department immigration judges who are challenging the legality of their sudden dismissals.[1]

Megan Jackler and Brandon Jaroch, the two former immigration judges at the center of the case, were summarily fired in 2025. Their termination notices bypassed the standard procedures and protections outlined in the Civil Service Reform Act, a post-Watergate statute designed to insulate the federal workforce from political spoils. Instead, the Justice Department cited Article II of the Constitution as the sole justification for their immediate removal. The administration's legal argument rests on the premise that immigration judges—and potentially thousands of other federal administrative law judges across various agencies—are 'inferior officers' who exercise significant government authority. Because their decisions can become the final policies of the United States, the administration argues they must serve entirely at the pleasure of the president, unencumbered by statutory protections that would otherwise require a stated cause for termination.[1][2]

These specific firings are not isolated incidents, but rather part of a broader, aggressive reshaping of the federal workforce that has accelerated over the past year. The administration has dismissed dozens of immigration judges, often terminating their employment just before their two-year probationary periods ended. According to testimonies and union representatives, these dismissal letters provided no individualized explanation and identified no finding of misconduct, insubordination, or deficient performance. The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the union representing immigration judges, has publicly condemned the purges, noting that the terminations are occurring exactly as Congress has allocated billions of dollars to hire more judges and clear a backlog of nearly four million pending immigration cases.[3][4]

The legal battle over these terminations escalated significantly in March 2026 when the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB)—the independent, quasi-judicial agency designed specifically to protect federal workers from political retaliation—issued a landmark ruling. The Republican-controlled board determined that it must relinquish jurisdiction entirely whenever a federal agency invokes constitutional authority to justify an adverse personnel action against an employee. The two-member board argued that immigration judges exercise independent judgment and that their decisions on legal admission to the United States become final decisions of the executive branch if not appealed. Consequently, the board ruled that civil service protections impeded the president's constitutional authority to oversee the executive branch.[1][2]

That MSPB decision upended decades of established legal precedent, effectively closing the primary administrative avenue of appeal for civil servants fired under the Article II rationale. By declaring that it cannot review cases where the executive branch claims constitutional removal powers, the board left fired employees with no recourse within the civil service system itself. Federal employment attorneys warned that the ruling created a massive loophole, setting a precedent that could easily be applied to other agencies with quasi-judicial officers, from the National Labor Relations Board to the Social Security Administration. The decision essentially signaled that relabeling a career employee as an inferior officer was sufficient to erase a career's worth of statutory protections.[2]

Facing a closed door at the MSPB, attorneys for the fired judges argued that the administration is deliberately misconstruing Supreme Court precedent to neuter the laws protecting public servants from political abuse. They appealed directly to the Federal Circuit, requesting that the full bench hear the case due to its extraordinary national importance. Nathaniel Zelinsky, an attorney representing the fired federal workers, stated that the government's assertion of a constitutional right to bypass anti-discrimination and civil service laws is both legally flawed and deeply unjust. The legal team maintains that Congress explicitly created these protections to ensure that administrative judges can rule based on the law and the facts, rather than the fear of summary termination by political appointees.[1]

The Federal Circuit's decision to grant the en banc petition underscores the profound constitutional questions at play, as appellate courts rarely take such a step for personnel disputes. The court's order noted that a poll was requested and taken among the active judges, who collectively decided that the petition for review warranted full-court consideration. The last notable instance of the Federal Circuit granting such a review involved high-stakes legal challenges to presidential tariff authorities under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. By taking the case en banc, the court is signaling that it recognizes the broader implications of the Article II firings, moving the dispute from a standard employment grievance to a major constitutional showdown.[1]

The outcome of this current case will serve as a definitive judicial test for the 'unitary executive theory'—the conservative legal doctrine asserting that the president holds absolute, unrestrictable control over the entire executive branch. If the Federal Circuit sides with the administration, it could pave the way for the at-will dismissal of tens of thousands of career civil servants and administrative judges who were previously shielded from political pressure. Conversely, a ruling in favor of the fired judges would reaffirm the power of Congress to establish independent civil service protections, setting a hard ceiling on the president's ability to unilaterally reshape the federal workforce through constitutional reclassification.[2]