(Reuters) -A federal judge said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump lacked the power to remove a Democratic member from the Federal Labor Relations Authority and ordered that Susan Tsui Grundmann be reinstated.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington, D.C., is a setback to Trump's bid to bring independent agencies like the FLRA under his control, and potentially to his efforts to drastically shrink the federal workforce.
Sooknanan's decision reinstating Grundmann gives it a 2-1 Democratic majority until her term expires in July.
The FLRA, which was created by the U.S. Congress to be independent from the White House, can order federal agencies to bargain with unions and in some cases prevent agencies from firing unionized workers.
Sooknanan said Trump's move had undermined Congress' goal of insulating the FLRA from politics.
"The independence of the FLRA was central to its creation, as Congress wanted to ensure a fair, consistent, and unbiased process for managing federal labor relations that would not shift with political whims," Sooknanan said.
The White House and Grundmann's lawyers did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired since Trump took office, part of an aggressive cost-cutting initiative spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk, a top White House adviser.
Nearly 30% of federal employees are represented by unions, which typically gives them more legal protections than other government workers. Unions are generally required to bring legal disputes with agencies to the FLRA, preventing them from going to court first.
Trump fired Grundmann, a Biden appointee, on February 11 and did not provide a reason for doing so, according to court filings.
Grundmann in her lawsuit claims Trump violated a federal labor relations law that says FLRA members may only be removed "for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."
A lawyer for the Department of Justice at a hearing last week did not deny that Trump violated the law, but argued that the restrictions on the removal of FLRA members are unconstitutional.
"The government's arguments paint with a broad brush and threaten to upend fundamental protections in our Constitution. But ours is not an autocracy; it is a system of checks and balances," Sooknanan said.
Trump has attempted to remove Democratic appointees from several other independent federal agencies, drawing legal challenges from at least three other officials besides Grundmann.
The Trump administration is appealing decisions reinstating members of the National Labor Relations Board, which hears private-sector labor disputes, and the Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews federal workers' appeals when they are fired or face other discipline.
(Reporting by Jack Queen and Dan Wiessner; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Stephen Coates)
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