Judge:Trump "Wrongfully Removed PuertoRico Oversight Members"
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| A darkened street in the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan, P.R., in 2022. The island has struggled to restructure more than $9 billion in debt held by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known as Prepa.Credit...Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times |
Reporting from Miami
New York Times
President Trump violated the due process rights of three members of the board overseeing Puerto Rico’s finances when he dismissed them without cause, a federal judge ruled on Friday.
Judge MarĂa Antongiorgi-JordĂ¡n of the Federal District Court in San Juan found that the White House failed to comply with a 2016 law that created the seven-member board.
In granting the preliminary injunction, she effectively returned the three to their posts, finding that she did not have to formally order their reinstatement because they had not been properly removed. Mr. Trump dismissed five of the board’s seven members in early August, after the right-wing agitator Laura Loomer had criticized the board’s spending.
Mr. Trump has long had a fractious relationship with Puerto Rico. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, his administration delayed critical aid to the island, and he mused aloud about selling it.
The board members who sued — Andrew G. Biggs, Arthur J. GonzĂ¡lez and Betty A. Rosa — were each dismissed with a brief email that did not specify any cause. The White House ultimately outlined several reasons in a letter Sept. 26, nearly two months after the purge and three days before the judge held the first hearing in the case.
The letter said in part that the members were dismissed for their “inefficiency, ineffectiveness, neglect, and failure to advance the statutory mission of the Oversight Board.”
Judge Antongiorgi-JordĂ¡n wrote in her ruling that the letter was evidence that the White House knew it was required to offer reasons before removing members of the board.
The judge dismissed arguments from lawyers representing Mr. Trump and the White House, who she said suggested that the president could remove members for any reason, without having to disclose it or provide an opportunity to contest it.
“When the President disregards the law,” Judge Antongiorgi-JordĂ¡n wrote, “the very foundations of our democracy begin to crack.”
The judge did not opine on whether the cause belatedly provided by the White House was grounds for the members’ removal.
Congress passed the Promesa law in 2016, during the Obama administration, to restructure the debt of the bankrupt Puerto Rican government. It laid out rules for appointing and dismissing members of a new Financial Oversight and Management Board, including providing cause for their removal.
The law considers board members officials of the territorial government of Puerto Rico, not of the federal government.
But the island has struggled to restructure more than $9 billion in debt held by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known as Prepa. In a guest opinion essay published in The New York Times last week, Dr. Biggs and David A. Skeel Jr., a former chairman of the oversight board, argued that the Trump administration might have purged the board to stack it with new members friendlier to bondholders.
Five of the board’s members were removed in early August, including Judge GonzĂ¡lez, a retired bankruptcy judge, and Dr. Rosa, the New York State education commissioner. Dr. Biggs, an expert on government pensions and other public sector benefits, was dismissed a couple of weeks later, on Aug. 13.
Andrew Warren, a lawyer for the board members, called the ruling “an important victory for the rule of law.”
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