Judge rules Maurene Comey's firing unlawful and orders her reinstated
US District Judge Jesse Furman in New York found that the July 2025 firing of federal prosecutor Maurene Comey broke the Civil Service Reform Act and the separation of powers. He ordered her reinstated retroactively with back pay. The Justice Department says it will appeal.
A federal judge in New York ruled on Monday that the US Justice Department unlawfully fired prosecutor Maurene Comey. Jesse Furman, of the Southern District of New York, ordered her reinstated retroactively and paid the salary she lost.
The Justice Department has already responded. It disagrees with the decision and says it will appeal.
What the judge found
In a 55-page decision, Furman concluded that the firing broke the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and the constitutional separation of powers. The government had argued that Article II of the Constitution gives the president unlimited power to remove prosecutors. The judge rejected that, calling it a “sweeping and unprecedented theory of executive authority”.
He also threw out the argument that the case belonged before the board that hears federal employment disputes. Because the termination letter cited only Article II, not a civil-service statute, the court held that it had jurisdiction.
Back pay runs from her firing in July 2025 to 20 December, when Comey took another job. Her lawyers called it a win for every civil servant. The case, Comey v. Department of Justice, is docketed as 1:25-cv-07625 in the Southern District of New York.
Who Maurene Comey is
She had been a federal prosecutor in Manhattan since 2015 and worked on some of the most watched cases of recent years, from Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to Sean “Diddy” Combs and former senator Robert Menendez. In court filings the government itself acknowledged that her performance reviews from 2019 to 2024 were rated “outstanding”.
She was removed by a memo from Washington, effective immediately, with no reason given. Her lawsuit argued that the likely reason was that she is the daughter of former FBI director James Comey.
Heading for appeal
The government leaned on a Supreme Court ruling from June that lets the president fire members of some independent agencies at will. Furman held that this does not stretch to career prosecutors, and that is the line the appeal will test. It is not the first time this year the Trump administration has lost a fight of this kind in court, as happened over birthright citizenship.
Image: U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
