A federal judge on Saturday ruled that the appointment of Kari Lake, the head of Voice of America’s oversight agency, was invalid, voiding mass layoffs that she had carried out at the federally funded news group last year.
The decision from Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was a major rejection of President Trump’s attempts to dismantle the storied government-funded news group, which was founded to combat Nazi propaganda.
If upheld by higher courts, Judge Lamberth’s ruling would allow more than 1,000 journalists and support staff members at the news group to return to their jobs. Ms. Lake, who had been leading the U.S. Agency for Global Media, V.O.A.’s parent agency, said that she would appeal the decision.
Before Mr. Trump pushed to close the agency and influence its editorial decisions, Voice of America broadcast in 49 languages and had more than 360 million weekly listeners around the world, providing news services to foreign countries with limited press freedoms, such as China, Russia and Iran.
In his ruling, Judge Lamberth called Mr. Trump’s decision to have Ms. Lake lead the global media agency without Senate confirmation or appropriate procedures required for an acting head “violence to the statutory and constitutional scheme.”
The judge found that Ms. Lake’s appointment violated the law that determines who can serve as an acting head of an agency whose permanent leader would require Senate confirmation.
The law, the Vacancies Act, requires that an acting head must be the second senior officer of an agency, be appointed by the president with the Senate’s consent or be a senior officer who had been at the agency before a vacancy arose.
The New York Times.
