Judge tosses lawsuit over Trump's firing of US African Development Foundation board members

Key Points

• U.S. District Judge Richard Leon dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that President Trump acted within his legal authority when he fired the USADF board members in February.
• In a separate March ruling, Leon also found the administration’s removal of most grant money and staff from the congressionally created agency was legal, provided a minimal presence was maintained as required by law.
• Board members never received firing notices due to incorrect email addresses, so when they met in March and appointed Ward Brehm as president, the judge said their terms had already ended.
• A different lawsuit by two USADF staffers and a Zambian consulting firm remains pending, challenging the administration’s deep scaleback of the agency and the unconfirmed appointment of Pete Marocco.

A federal judge has tossed out a lawsuit over President Donald Trump's dismantling of a U.S. federal agency that invests in African small businesses.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., dismissed the case on Tuesday, finding that Trump was acting within his legal authority when he fired the U.S. African Development Foundation's board members in February. In March, the same judge ruled that the administration's removal of most grant money and staff from the congressionally created agency was also legal, as long as the agency was maintained at the minimum level required by law.

USADF was created as an independent agency in 1980, and its board members must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. In 2023, Congress allocated $46 million to the agency to invest in small agricultural and energy infrastructure projects and other economic development initiatives in 22 African countries.

On Feb. 19, Trump issued an executive order that said USADF, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Inter-American Foundation and the Presidio Trust should be scaled back to the minimum presence required by law. At the time, USADF had five of its seven board seats filled. A few days later, an administration official told Ward Brehm that he was fired, and emails were sent to the other board members notifying them that they had also been terminated.

Those emails were never received, however, because they were sent to the wrong email addresses. The four board members, believing they still held their posts because they had not been given notice, met in March and passed a resolution appointing Brehm as the president of the board.

But Trump had already appointed Pete Marocco as the new chairman of what the administration believed to now be a board of one. Since then, both men have claimed to be the president of the agency, and Brehm filed the lawsuit March 6.

Leon said that even though they didn't receive the emails, the four board members were effectively terminated in February, and so they didn't have the authority to appoint Brehm to lead the board.

Brehm’s attorney, Bradley Girard with Democracy Forward, expressed disappointment with the judge's decision.

“But in our parallel case, Rural Development Innovations v. Marocco, a grantee and two USADF employees have also challenged Marocco’s unlawful appointment," Girard wrote in an email. "We are hopeful that the Court will reject the defendants’ attempt to ignore the constitutional and statutory requirements for appointing board members to federal agencies.”

That lawsuit is still pending before the same judge. In that case, two USADF staffers and a consulting firm based in Zambia that works closely with USADF contend that the Trump administration's efforts to deeply scale back the agency wrongly usurps Congress' powers. They also say Marocco was unlawfully appointed to the board, in part because he was never confirmed by the Senate as required.

Leon's ruling in Brehm's case did not address whether the Trump administration had the power to install Marocco as board chair on a temporary basis.