Supreme Court turns away Trump military board appointees’ fight against Biden firings

The Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal from several allies of former President Trump challenging how President Biden removed them from military advisory boards.

The former board members contended Biden had no authority to fire them before their three-year terms expired, but a lower appeals court dismissed their challenge as moot.

“His stated reason — to staff them with people who share his values — compromises their independence by undermining the statutory system of checks and balances that has always governed their operation,” the members’ high court petition reads.

Their lawsuit also challenged how the Biden administration suspended the boards’ operations for several months in 2021 and authorized the creation of subcommittees. Lower courts found the members had no legal standing to bring those claims.

“By taking these actions, the President and his chief officers have disrupted important, well-established practices and exceeded the bounds of the law,” the petition states.

The former board members conceded they could no longer ask to be reinstated to the board since their three-year terms have now ended, but they continued their legal fight in the hopes of blocking presidents from firing military board members in the future.

The federal government waived its right to respond to the petition.

The plaintiffs included three Trump appointees to the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors. They were Heidi Stirrup, the Trump-era White House liaison to the Justice Department; Douglas Lengenfelder, a former Republican commissioner in Cambria County, Pa.; and Robert Gleason, a former chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) challenged his removal from the board at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who was not on any of the boards, also joined the suit.

Sean Spicer, who served as Trump’s White House press secretary, was the final plaintiff, though he only challenged the suspension of operations and the subcommittees, not his removal from the Naval Academy’s board; he had unsuccessfully challenged his removal in a separate lawsuit.