A federal appeals court ordered intelligence agencies to rehire officers who were fired for working on diversity issues, a major victory for employees who had said that intelligence chiefs had overstepped their authority in firing them.
In a 2-to-1 decision, a three-judge panel said the effort by the C.I.A. and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to fire 19 career intelligence officers was wrong and that the agencies must adhere to their own regulations.
The employees have said they believe they were arbitrarily fired at the beginning of the second Trump administration and sued to be reinstated. The Trump administration is likely to appeal, and it is not clear how quickly the intelligence officers might be assigned to new posts inside their agencies.
The U.S. government argued that the C.I.A. director and the director of national intelligence had wide latitude to fire employees with or without cause.
But the court found that government regulations provided an opportunity for intelligence officers to seek reassignment.
None of the fired officers were initially hired as diversity or human resources experts. They were instead intelligence specialists who were assigned to diversity offices during the Biden administration, when the C.I.A. director and the director of national intelligence were seeking to diversify agencies that had long been mostly white.
The appeals court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the officers’ Fifth Amendment right to due process had been violated.
“The question before us is whether the termination regulation creates an entitlement to the rights of consideration for reassignment and internal appeal of a termination decision,” the appeals court wrote. “We find that it does.”
In court, the government said the internal regulations allowing employees to appeal made little sense because ultimately the intelligence chief who did the firing would also conduct the appeal review.
But the court said that forcing intelligence agencies to comply with their own procedures did not undermine the directors’ authority.
“The directors could certainly have a change of heart,” the court wrote. “It is also possible that the intelligence officers may secure reassignment to positions elsewhere in the agencies, hence avoiding termination altogether.”
The C.I.A. and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately return a request for comment.
Kevin Carroll, a lawyer for the officers, urged John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, and Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, to immediately find jobs for his clients.
“Just allow these good, patriotic career intelligence officers to find other jobs serving our country within O.D.N.I. and C.I.A.,” he said.
Mr. Carroll said that the panel, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., had “rightly upheld intelligence officers’ rights under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to make intelligence agencies simply follow their own regulations.”
