Justice Department expected to appeal ruling to the Second Circuit
A judge’s ruling that the Justice Department acted unlawfully when it fired prosecutor Maurene Comey could influence how other judges weigh similar terminations, legal experts said this week, even as the government is expected to appeal. Judge Jesse Furman found the department fired Comey, an assistant US attorney and the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, without cause. The White House rejected allegations that the department under President Donald Trump has punished political opponents.
Furman found the firing violated the Civil Service Reform Act and rejected the department’s argument that Article II of the Constitution gave Trump and his attorney general the right to fire line prosecutors, who are not political appointees. The department’s claim, the judge said, “flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent.” “It is also without merit,” Furman said. “Indeed, to accept Defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.”
Comey successfully litigated numerous high-profile cases during her tenure at the Southern District of New York, including guilty verdicts against Ghislaine Maxwell and Sean “Diddy” Combs, and she prosecuted the case against Jeffrey Epstein.
She filed suit over her ouster in September 2025 and said she received neither notice nor an explanation of the decision. On July 16, 2025, Comey received a letter stating “your employment with the Department of Justice is hereby terminated, and you are removed from federal service effective immediately.” When she asked Jay Clayton, then the Manhattan US attorney, about the notice, he allegedly said “all I can say is it came from Washington. I can’t tell you anything else,” according to court papers.
The Justice Department has said the firing was directed by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi and subsequently “ratified” by her successor, Todd Blanche. The department also defended the idea that a person’s family relationships could be considered in termination proceedings. Comey’s lawyers and critics of the president have claimed she was fired because her father is a longtime Trump foe.
“It looks as if Judge Furman has completely vindicated her and rejected just about all of the arguments made by the government,” said Carl Tobias, Williams chair at the University of Richmond School of Law. “And so it’s really important to have this because of the way she was essentially summarily fired, and so it sets a valuable precedent.”
The precedent’s practical force has limits for now. Elizabeth Wolstein, a partner at Schlam Stone & Dolan LLP and a former Manhattan federal prosecutor in the civil division, said such a decision “doesn’t have any binding effect on another judge, even in the same district.” Still, she said, “if it’s well reasoned and persuasive, it is definitely going to be persuasive to another judge faced with a similar issue.” Neama Rahmani, founder of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, said the ruling “is not binding at all, but it’s certainly something that judges look to with similar or exact same facts,” and can be used by others challenging their terminations.
Tobias cautioned that “it’s very clear the government will appeal this,” by way of the Second Circuit court of appeals. “I expect that Furman would be affirmed by that court, and then I assume the administration would then appeal to the US supreme court,” he said. The Supreme Court would then decide whether to hear the case; if it declines, the appeals court decision would stand.
Rahmani described the ruling as part of a broader pattern of judicial pushback against the administration. “You are seeing the courts step up and stop and prevent the administration when they are violating the rule of law,” he said. As one example, he noted that on Monday, Los Angeles federal Judge David Carter rejected Trump’s attempt to set aside 20,000 ballots in California. “Whether it’s the supreme court and birthright citizenship, or even individual cases like this, there have been limited, I would say, rulings by the court that have limited what President Trump can do,” Rahmani said.
Rahmani added that the case holds legal issues that could draw the Supreme Court’s interest, especially if different federal appeals courts were to reach different conclusions. Even then, he said, review would not guarantee a limit on Trump’s power: “There are a lot of the justices on the supreme court that really don’t believe there should be much of any restrictions on what the president can do. So this is far from the silver bullet.”
“The Court’s decision is a complete rejection of this administration’s sweeping claim to unchecked executive power, and it demonstrates that our constitutional system of checks and balances is alive and well,” Comey’s legal team said in a statement. Her attorneys are Ellen Blain, Nicole Gueron and Deepa Vanamali at Clarick Gueron Reisbaum, as well as Margaret Donovan at Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Furman’s decision or the claims of politically driven firings. In a statement, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis rejected allegations that the department is being used to punish opponents. “Unlike Joe Biden, President Trump has not weaponized the Department of Justice against his political foes. The Department is focused on restoring law and order and keeping Americans safe,” Bis said. “The results speak for themselves: Under President Trump, we have seen the largest decrease in violent crime in American history.”
The ruling lands amid the Justice Department’s repeated attempts to prosecute James Comey. The department made public its third case against him this week; one prior proceeding was dismissed and another is pending.