Corporation for Public Broadcasting Sues Trump Over Firings (3)

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its board of directors are suing the Trump administration after three CPB board members received an email on Monday asserting that President Donald Trump had fired them.

The move “is of no legal effect given that the President has no power to remove or terminate CPB’s Board members,” according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday with the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

The CPB, a nonprofit corporation established by Congress in 1967, was created to be “insulated from partisan governmental interference and control,” according to the suit. That includes the notion that CPB is “not a federal agency subject to the President’s authority,” but rather a private corporation and its board members aren’t officers of the United States, and thus aren’t within the removal provisions of Article II of the Constitution, the suit alleges.

CPB’s suit comes in the midst of a Trump administration firing spree at its 100-day mark, which targeted officials at five independent workplace agencies, leaving three of them significantly damaged. The terminations have caused the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Merit Systems Protection Board unable to issue decisions or perform other key functions.

CPB, which funds public media corporations across the US through Congress-appropriated funds, is “a private, non-profit corporation that is not subject to control by the Executive Branch,” according to the suit. CPB has been recognized as independent by the US Supreme Court, the organization says.

The plaintiffs—which include the CPB, its board, and Laura G. Ross, Thomas E. Rothman, and Diane Kaplan, the three named board members who received the April 28 email from Trent Morse, Trump’s deputy director of presidential personnel—seek a court declaration that that communication “is of no legal effect.”

They’re also asking for an order that the defendants “take no actions to give effect to the purported email or otherwise seek to interfere with or control the governance and operations of the CPB.”

The “credible and urgent threats” facing CPB aren’t speculative, the suit says. “To the contrary, such threats are well-grounded” in the administration’s recent terminations of board members at other congressionally-created organizations, such as the US Institute of Peace.

The administration has violated the Declaratory Judgment Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the separation of powers clause, the suit says.

“As numerous courts have repeatedly affirmed, the Constitution gives President Trump the power to remove personnel who exercise his executive authority,” said White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers in a written statement. “The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue.”

CPB has also recently sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency for allegedly blocking access to a $40 million grant designed to upgrade the US emergency-alert system. The March 13 suit against FEMA claims the funds were blocked by Trump as a result of his freeze of trillions of dollars in federal spending.

Saul Ewing LLP represents CPB and the other plaintiffs.

The case is Corp. for Public Broadcasting v. Trump, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-01305, complaint 4/29/25.