Judge Rules DOJ Unlawfully Fired Maurene Comey, Orders Her Reinstated With Back Pay

A federal judge ruled Monday that the Justice Department unlawfully fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, from her job as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman said in a 55-page decision that her removal violated both the constitutional separation of powers and federal law. He retroactively reinstated Comey and ordered the Trump administration to pay her back pay from the date of her firing in July 2025 through Dec. 20, when she accepted a different job.

The administration had argued that Article II of the Constitution gives the president unrestricted power to remove executive officials, and that Congress cannot limit the removal of federal prosecutors. Furman disagreed, finding that the firing violated the Civil Service Reform Act, the landmark 1978 law that protects federal workers. He wrote that the government was trying to "upend" long-settled case law allowing Congress to regulate the removal of so-called inferior officers. "Indeed, to accept Defendants' argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation's constitutional system," he wrote.

Comey's lawyers called the ruling a "hard-earned victory" for her and all civil servants. "This decision reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the President is not above the law," attorneys Ellen Blain, Nicole Gueron, Deepa Vanamali and Margaret Donovan said in a statement. A Justice Department spokesperson said the department "disagrees with this decision and will appeal in due course."

Comey had worked as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan since 2015 and handled high-profile cases against Sean "Diddy" Combs, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and former Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez. In a letter to colleagues after her dismissal, she said she was "summarily fired via memo" from Justice Department headquarters and given no reason. The termination notice cited Article II and said she was removed from federal service effective immediately.

It was initially unclear who ordered the firing. In May, the administration said then-Attorney General Pam Bondi directed her removal and her successor, Todd Blanche, ratified it. Comey sued last year, alleging she was probably fired because President Trump dislikes her father, who has been indicted twice during the second Trump administration. One of those cases was thrown out, and James Comey has denied wrongdoing in the other.

In court filings, the Justice Department acknowledged that Maurene Comey received an "outstanding" rating in her performance reviews from 2019 through 2024. It said the firing was carried out under authority Congress gave the attorney general to dismiss assistant U.S. attorneys. The government also leaned on the Supreme Court's June decision allowing the president to fire members of certain independent agencies without cause, which overturned a more than 90-year-old precedent. Furman rejected the comparison and called the department's position a "sweeping and unprecedented theory of executive authority."

Earlier in the case, the administration tried to have the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that Comey had to take her claims to the Merit Systems Protection Board, the agency that hears federal employee appeals. Furman denied that motion, finding that because the firing rested on Article II rather than a civil service statute, the federal court had jurisdiction. Her case was one of several brought by fired government employees that are testing the limits of the president's removal power.