A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that Trump administration officials broke the law when they tried to fire the director of Voice of America, handing the White House another legal defeat in its effort to dismantle the government-funded international broadcaster.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a permanent injunction blocking the removal of VOA director Michael Abramowitz, affirming an August 2025 ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth. The case is Abramowitz v. Lake, No. 25-5314.
Writing for the panel, Judge Cornelia Pillard found that the leaders of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, ignored a federal statute when they attempted to fire Abramowitz unilaterally. Under a law enacted in 2021, the director of Voice of America cannot be removed without approval from a majority of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board, an independent oversight body. President Donald Trump fired six of the board's seven members after returning to office in January 2025, leaving it unable to approve the dismissal. Six of the seven seats remain empty; the seventh vote belongs to the secretary of state.
Pillard described the law as a "durable barrier against any breach of the firewall protecting the journalistic integrity of Voice of America and the affiliate networks." The court rejected the administration's argument that the removal restrictions were unconstitutional and cut into the president's powers, noting that the president retains indirect authority over the VOA director because he can remove members of the oversight board.
The court also rejected the Justice Department's argument that Abramowitz should have pursued his dismissal through the Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal employment disputes, finding that Congress intended the board law to protect the broadcaster's editorial independence rather than create an ordinary federal employment dispute.
Kari Lake, who served as a senior adviser to the agency's acting chief executive, moved to fire Abramowitz in August 2025 after he refused reassignment from Voice of America director to a chief management post in Greenville, North Carolina. Abramowitz, who has remained on administrative leave while the litigation continues, called the move illegal at the time.
The ruling is part of a pattern of courts finding that Trump officials pushed out federal workers unlawfully. About 1,300 other Voice of America employees were also placed on indefinite administrative leave as the administration moved to shrink the broadcaster following Trump's March 2025 executive order calling for the shutdown of the Agency for Global Media and other agencies. In a separate ruling, Lamberth voided Lake's orders after finding she had run the media agency without the required Senate confirmation.
