Opinion ID: 3040425
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: separation of powers claim

Text: Stanley first argues that her removal by the Attorney General violated the doctrine of separation of powers because the Attorney General converted her term from a fixed period to at-will employment. More specifically, she argues that the Attorney General did not have the power to redesignate her position as confidential or policy-making, in part because the position has a special relationship to third parties. We disagree. [4] The plain language of the statute governing United States Trustees expressly delegates the power to remove Trustees to the Attorney General, and it does not limit the power to remove Trustees in any specific way. See 28 U.S.C. § 581(c) (“Each United States trustee is subject to removal by the Attorney General.”).5 This type of delegation does not, in and of itself, violate the separation of powers. See, e.g., Webster, 486 U.S. at 599-602 (upholding as a general principle a similar grant of discretion to the Director of the CIA while holding that the plaintiff could bring procedural due process, equal protection, and privacy-based claims). [5] The legislative history of the United States Trustees Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 581, also supports the view that Congress intended to confer this authority on the Attorney General. Until 1986, § 581(c) stated that Trustees were “subject to removal for cause by the Attorney General.” See Bankruptcy 5 We express no opinion on whether there might be other constitutional limitations on this power, grounded, for example, in equal protection. 528 STANLEY v. GONZALES Judges, United States Trustees, and Family Farmer Bank- ruptcy Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-554, § 111(c), 100 Stat. 3088 (1986). In 1986, the statute was amended to delete the “for cause” language. Id. [6] We also agree with the Federal Circuit that the decision to classify a given position as confidential or policy-making is not reviewable in federal court as a violation of the separation of powers doctrine. See Stanley, 423 F.3d at 1273. In Stanley, the Federal Circuit dismissed Stanley’s appeal from her adverse judgment in the MSPB process. The court held that classification of her position as confidential or policymaking was an “inherently discretionary judgment call committed to the Attorney General” and thus unreviewable. Id. (internal citations omitted); cf. Dep’t of Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518, 527 (1988) (holding that the President’s decision to grant or deny a security clearance was similarly unreviewable). Stanley argues for a broad rule that officers who have a special relationship to third parties may not be removed solely due to a change in Presidential administration, relying primarily on Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), and Wiener v. United States, 357 U.S. 349 (1958). These cases do not stand for such a rule—rather, both cases stand for the proposition that a President may not remove a member of a quasi legislative or quasi-judicial body in the face of either restrictions imposed by Congress, Humphrey’s Executor, 295 U.S. at 632, or a “congressional failure of explicitness,” Wiener, 357 U.S. at 352-53. Stanley’s case is easily distinguished because 28 U.S.C. § 581(c) neither imposes restrictions on the Attorney General’s ability to act nor fails to elucidate the power it confers. Rather, it clearly accords the power to remove United States Trustees to the Attorney General. By contrast, in Humphrey’s Executor, the Federal Trade Commission Act delegated to the President the authority to STANLEY v. GONZALES 529 remove members of the Federal Trade Commission “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” 295 U.S. at 622. The Court held that the intent of the act was “to limit the executive power of removal to the causes enumerated.” Id. at 626. No such statutory limitation exists in the case of United States Trustees. Similarly, in Wiener, the statute in question made no provision for removal, and the Court declined to accord the President plenary authority of removal in the face of congressional silence. 357 U.S. at 356. The plaintiff in Wiener claimed that the President could not remove him from the War Claims Commission simply because the President preferred “men of his own choosing” on the Commission. Id. at 356. The Court agreed, holding that in situations where a statute is silent on removal and the position at issue is one of “adjudicatory” authority, the President does not have the discretion to remove an individual at will. See id. at 356 (holding that no power of removal can be implied when Congress has “said nothing about it.”). [7] The statutory schemes in these cases stand in juxtaposition to the statutory dictate here—Congress specifically vested the authority to remove Trustees in the Attorney General and gave the Attorney General the power to make that decision with or without cause. No violation of the doctrine of separation of powers occurs when the Attorney General acts pursuant to express authorization from Congress in removing a United States Trustee.