FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Two Christian organizations are intervening in a lawsuit brought against the Trump administration by a fired independent agency employee who claims her removal was unlawful.
President Donald Trump fired two Democrat commissioners who controlled the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under the Biden administration. On Thursday, the Christian Employers Alliance and Choices Pregnancy Center of Greater Phoenix moved to intervene in a lawsuit opposite Democrat Jocelyn Samuels, who they say imposed unlawful gender identity and abortion mandates on them, violating their religious freedom.
Samuels and fellow Democrat Charlotte Burrows used their years on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to require employers to facilitate gender transitions and abortions. Shortly after his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump ordered the independent agency to rescind its gender-identity mandate.
Samuels and Burrows refused, and Trump removed them from office. Samuels is now suing for reinstatement.
Represented by religious liberty law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian Employers Alliance and Choices Pregnancy Center of Greater Phoenix filed a motion to intervene as defendants in Samuels’ lawsuit.
“The Court should not assess Samuels’ removal’s validity without hearing from the very employers that the removal seeks to protect,” the lawsuit says.
The gender-identity mandate imposed by Samuels required employers to treat males as females and allow employee access to private spaces based on gender identity. The abortion mandate misused the
Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which is supposed to protect pregnant women, to promote a pro-abortion agenda, silence pro-life speech by employers, and force employers to facilitate elective abortions.
“Our clients are both Christian organizations. They recognize the biological reality that humans are male and female, and the biological reality that life begins at conception, and so neither of them can comply with these unlawful mandates,” said Julie Marie Blake, senior counsel for regulatory litigation at Alliance Defending Freedom.
The Christian Employers Alliance aims to “unite, equip, and represent Christian-owned businesses to protect religious freedom.” Choices Pregnancy Center of Greater Phoenix provides women in unplanned pregnancies life-affirming counseling and resources.
Trump took the first right step in issuing executive orders recognizing the harms of gender ideology and telling the EEOC to stop imposing its gender-identity mandate, according to Blake.
“Our clients are the real people who will be harmed if [Samuels] gets back into office and is able to reinforce and continue to go after employers through these mandates,” Blake told The Daily Signal.
Trump should also be free to replace Samuels and Burrows with new commissioners that will vote to undo the woke Biden-era mandates, says Blake.
Jocelyn Samuels, the fired EEOC commissioner, is seen here in a photo when she first worked for the EEOC in the Obama administration. (Robb Hill/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“These mandates still technically remain on the books,” the ADF attorney said. “They still burden people, and so he needs to be able to appoint new people replacing them to undo the harms from the Biden administration.”
This case has the potential to set a major precedent about the president’s authority to control the officials who work for the executive branch. Alliance Defending Freedom has the opportunity not only to protect their clients’ religious freedom, but also to reshape the law governing the administrative state.
This case calls into question Humphrey’s Executor, in which the court found in 1935 that Presidnet Franklin D. Roosevelt could not fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission.
“The Supreme Court had a series of cases dealing with the president’s authority to control unelected officials that work for him,” Blake said. “And the Supreme Court has recently suggested that some very old cases prohibiting the president from directing these so-called independent agencies are on thin constitutional ice.”
“The Framers divided the government to three branches,” Blake added. “You can’t just have an independent agency separate from the president.”
Alliance Defending Freedom moved to intervene in the lawsuit which had been lawsuit in a federal district court subject to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which has recently decided a handful of cases beginning to reestablish the unitary executive.
In Severino v. Biden in 2021, the court held that the president’s unrestricted removal power did not extend to the Administrative Conference of the United States because the Conference “does not resolve or commence matters for the Executive Branch or determine anyone’s rights or obligations.”
On March 28, the Court of Appeals cited Severino v. Biden in ruling that President Donald Trump can fire holdover Biden appointees at “independent agencies,” including the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.
“This case filed by Jocelyn Samuels is in that court’s jurisdiction, the U.S. District Court for D.C., so it’s subject to that precedent directly,” Blake said.
The case takes on big constitutional questions about the separation of powers in the U.S. government.
“These important precedents matter because they do reflect the fact that real people and real interests are at stake,” Blake said. “These mandates harm real people. If Jocelyn Samuels returns to office, real people, real employers, will be harmed.”
“We are trying to defend their First Amendment rights, defend their ability to create a healthy workplace for employers, and it’s wrapped up in this really important question about the president’s constitutional authority and responsibility to control these government officials,” she added.
