President Donald Trump, on the left, listens as Jeanine Pirro, the interim U.S. Attorney General for the District of Columbia on the right, delivers remarks during her swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Evan Vucci).
The U.S. Department of Justice revealed on Tuesday, via a legal complaint lodged by former Fox News host and acting U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, its request for a federal judge to determine that three Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) board members, who were dismissed by President Donald Trump through email months prior, have unlawfully continued to function in their roles and have “usurped their former offices” without legal authority.
This legal approach, known as a quo warranto action, is designed to scrutinize an individual’s right to occupy a public or corporate position. The DOJ’s lawsuit petitions the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to rule that Diane Kaplan, Laura G. Ross, and Thomas E. Rothman be removed from their roles on the CPB Board of Directors. The CPB is a private nonprofit organization established by Congress in 1967 to advance the “growth and development” of public broadcasting nationwide.
“President Donald J. Trump lawfully removed each Defendant from office on April 28, 2025. As recent Supreme Court orders have recognized, the President cannot meaningfully exercise his executive power under Article II of the Constitution without the power to select—and, when necessary, remove—those who hold federal office,” the DOJ said. “Personnel is policy, after all.”
The suit cast Kaplan, Ross and Rothman as defiant and carrying on at work despite failing to persuade a federal judge last month to declare that that the “purported” firings by email were of “no legal effect.”
“Despite the Court’s denial of their request for preliminary relief, Defendants have continued to usurp the office of board member of the CPB, including by participating in board meetings, voting on resolutions and other business that comes before the board, and presenting themselves to the public as board members,” the filing said. “All of this is manifestly unlawful.”
While Kaplan and Rothman were appointed by then-President Joe Biden, Ross was appointed by Trump in his first term and then again by Biden. All three were confirmed by the U.S. Senate, as the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 requires; there are nine board members in total, and “no more than 5 members of the Board appointed by the President may be members of the same political party.” Under the law, the board members are not “officers or employees of the United States.”
The firings brought the number of active board members to two.
In April, CPB filed a federal lawsuit claiming that Trump had “no power to remove or terminate” Kaplan, Rothman and Ross in “one sweeping act of executive overreach.”
The suit sought a restraining order that was later treated as a preliminary injunction request, but a federal judge — not convinced at this stage that Trump lacked authority to remove the board members — ruled in June that the plaintiffs “failed to carry their burden of demonstrating that they are likely to prevail on the merits of their claim for injunctive relief or that Plaintiffs are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief.”
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss reasoned at the time that although “Congress made clear that it intended that the Board of Directors perform its duties outside the government and without government or political influence,” the board could still function with two members and “important questions regarding the status of the Corporation and its relationship with the federal government” would have to be answered “another day.”
“Much of the parties’ briefing focuses on the question of whether the Corporation is a governmental or a private entity, and that question may have some bearing on later rounds of the litigation,” Moss wrote. “At this point, however, the Court is not yet persuaded that Plaintiffs are entitled to prevail on the merits, even if the Corporation is, in relevant respects, a private, nonprofit corporation that Congress intended to insulate from governmental interference.”
Though he denied a preliminary injunction, the judge did so without prejudice — meaning CPB could file again in the event that “Defendants (or those acting in concert with them) take steps to interfere in the independence of the Corporation.”
Now the DOJ is forcing the issue, asking in a new case against Kaplan, Ross, and Rothman that the board members be officially “ousted,” that their pay from April 28 until the present day be ordered returned, and that any “official” board actions they’ve taken be declared “null and void.”
“In short, Defendants are defiantly acting as if the Court granted the relief the Court denied—raising the question of why they bothered to seek preliminary relief and consume the resources of the Court and the parties if they were simply going to ignore any adverse ruling,” the quo warranto suit said. “The United States cannot just stand by when lawful orders—both executive and judicial—are so openly flouted.”
The latest entry on Moss’ docket, from June 29, shows that the judge set an expedited briefing schedule for summary judgment in CPB case.
CPB did not immediately respond to Law&Crime’s request for comment.
