No slaughter for the CIA's DEI office — yet | Blaze Media
President Trump won the 2024 election promising to gut Biden-era DEI across the federal government, calling it "illegal and immoral." The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence tried to do exactly that — moving to fire 19 career officers who had spent their time on diversity, equity, and inclusion assignments instead of actual intelligence work.
Two Democrat-appointed judges said not so fast.
'As long as the employee subject to termination chooses to pursue reassignment, the agencies must attempt to reassign her.'
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Thursday that the CIA and ODNI have to let the 19 DEI-linked officers appeal their firings and, in some cases, apply for reassignment before they can be shown the door, the Washington Times reported.
The panel found the agencies skipped procedural steps required for a reduction in force — a technicality that's now kept the firings frozen for well over a year, according to Bloomberg Government.
Writing for the majority, Biden-appointee Judge Nicole Berner — joined by Obama-appointee Judge Stephanie Thacker — ruled the officers had enough of a claim to their jobs to sue in the first place.
Berner wrote: "As long as the employee subject to termination chooses to pursue reassignment, the agencies must attempt to reassign her."
Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images
In a blistering dissent, Judge Paul Niemeyer, a George H.W. Bush appointee, argued that Congress gave intelligence directors "unfettered discretion" to fire employees precisely so courts couldn't micromanage personnel decisions at agencies handling national security.
He called the injunction unlawful and urged the Supreme Court to step in, calling it a serious separation-of-powers problem: judges telling the CIA how to run its own house.
The ruling lands days after the Supreme Court handed Trump a win affirming his broad authority to fire employees, with a separate case providing a narrow carve-out for officials like Federal Reserve board members.
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