Cybersecurity Policy Report, DoJ, Fired Privacy Board Members Debate Impact of Supreme Court’s Slaughter Ruling, (Aug 24, 2026)
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How a Supreme Court ruling that upheld the president’s power to fire members of the Federal Trade Commission applies to the firing of appointees to the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) was debated Friday in dueling briefs filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The high court’s ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, which held that President Trump was entitled to fire FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, offers support for the dismissal of Travis LeBlanc and Edward Felten from the PCLOB, the Department of Justice said in its brief.
Like the FTC, the PCLOB is an executive branch agency whose members lack statutory protection against being removed “at will,” DoJ asserted. A related case, Trump v. Cook, in which the Supreme Court blocked the president’s attempt to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, offers further support for the removal of Messrs. LeBlanc and Felten, the department said.
“Cook and Slaughter both demonstrate the well-established, general rule that a statute must use ‘very clear and explicit language’ to restrict removal,” it said, citing case law. The law that established the PCLOB, the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007, lacks any provision that would shield PCLOB members from at-will firing, it noted.
But the history of the PCLOB’s statutory underpinnings suggests otherwise, according to the brief filed on behalf of Messrs. LeBlanc and Felten.
“When the White House rewrote the inaugural report of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (the PCLOB or Board), redlining passages that criticized Executive Branch surveillance practices, Congress did not equivocate. It removed the Board from the Executive Office of the President,” Messrs. LeBlanc and Felten told the court.
“It declared the Board ‘independent.’ It deleted the clause stating that members served at the ‘pleasure of the President.’ It eliminated the provision subjecting the Board to the President’s ‘general supervision,’” they noted.
“Slaughter draws a bright line: the President’s constitutionally-mandated removal authority reaches only subordinates who execute the law. The PCLOB executes nothing,” they said. The board instead offers advice to Congress and the White House on how antiterrorism laws affect Americans’ privacy and civil rights, they added.
Messrs. LeBlanc and Felten and PCLOB Chair Sharon Bradford Franklin, the board’s Democratic appointees, were fired in January 2025 shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, leaving the board with only a single Republican member, Beth Williams.
The president’s removal of Messrs. LeBlanc and Felten from the PCLOB was ruled unlawful last year by Senior Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court in Washington, a decision that the administration appealed to the D.C. circuit, which paused the case last year to await the Supreme Court’s Slaughter decision (CPR, Oct. 1, 2025).
After the Slaughter ruling, the appeals court decided it would expedite its consideration of LeBlanc, et al., v. U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, et al., No. 25-5197 (D.C. Cir. May 29, 2025). It requested supplemental briefs from the litigants and plans to schedule oral argument “on the first appropriate date following the completion of briefing” (CPR, Aug. 5).
A separate question in the case is whether Mr. LeBlanc is entitled to reinstatement. Mr. Felten’s term on the PCLOB expired in January, which makes the question of his reinstatement moot.
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