A US federal judge has ruled that the Justice Department unlawfully fired Maurene Comey, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and the daughter of ex-FBI director James Comey.
Judge Jesse Furman said the dismissal breached the constitutional separation of powers and federal law. He ordered her reinstatement retrospectively and directed the Trump administration to pay her back pay from the date of her dismissal in July 2025 until 20 December, when she took another job.
Comey had worked in the Southern District of New York since 2015, handling criminal cases involving Sean “Diddy” Combs, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and former Democratic senator Robert Menendez.
Judge rejects Justice Department arguments
In a 55-page ruling, Judge Furman found that her removal breached the Civil Service Reform Act, a 1978 law providing protections for federal workers.
The administration had argued that Article II of the US Constitution gave the president unrestricted power to remove federal prosecutors, and that Congress could not impose limits on that authority.
Judge Furman said the argument sought to “upend” established case law allowing Congress to regulate the removal of so-called inferior officers. “Indeed, to accept Defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system,” he wrote.
The judge also ruled that the federal court had jurisdiction because Comey’s dismissal was based on Article II of the Constitution rather than legislation governing the civil service.
The Justice Department had sought to have the case dismissed, arguing that Comey should first have taken her claims to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles appeals by federal employees over adverse actions. Judge Furman rejected that argument and allowed the lawsuit to proceed.
Maurene Comey’s dismissal
Comey said in a letter to former colleagues that she had been “summarily fired via memo” by the department’s headquarters in Washington and had not been given a reason.
She sued the Justice Department in September, alleging that she may have been dismissed because President Trump dislikes her father, who has been indicted twice during the second Trump administration. Her lawyers argued that the termination was carried out without cause, advance notice or an opportunity to contest it.
In court filings, the Justice Department acknowledged that Comey had received “outstanding” performance ratings from 2019 to 2024, while maintaining that her dismissal had been lawfully authorised by then-attorney general Pam Bondi.
Her case is among several brought by former government employees dismissed by President Trump without cause, testing the limits of presidential power over federal officials.
