Liz Oyer, who was fired from her position as pardon attorney last year over her refusal to recommend that Mel Gibson’s right to own a firearm be restored, said the Justice Department did not follow its own policies when it removed her.
Government Executive · Erich Wagner · September 3, 2026
Former U.S. Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer sued the Trump administration Thursday, asserting that her 2025 firing on “Article II” grounds violated her First and Fifth amendment rights, as well as the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. Oyer, who served as a federal public defender for a decade prior to her appointment to pardon attorney in 2022, was removed from her career post in March 2025, shortly after refusing to issue a nonbinding recommendation that actor Mel Gibson’s right to own a firearm be restored despite his 2011 domestic violence conviction. Her removal was one of the first in a string of so-called Article II firings at the Justice Department that eventually encompassed attorneys, prosecutors and immigration judges. In these cases, the department has elided the firing procedures and rules set forth by the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, instead arguing that the president has constitutional authority to remove these employees at will. Though Oyer filed an appeal with the Merit Systems Protection Board shortly after her firing last year, she has yet to receive meaningful movement toward a decision before the quasi-adjudicative agency. Last March, the MSPB relinquished jurisdiction of such cases, and in June, an MSPB administrative judge dismissed Oyer’s case without prejudice, a decision that means she must wait at least another six months before she may refile and longer to receive a decision. “The MSPB has proved, however, to be a dead end,” the lawsuit states. “Despite filing her MSPB appeal more than 16 months ago, she has yet to receive any substantive review of her termination. Most recently, on June 2, 2026, the MSPB dismissed Ms. Oyer’s appeal without prejudice for a minimum of an additional six months (and likely far longer), sending her case to a further prolonged limbo.” Although federal workers typically must exhaust their administrative avenue to appeal a personnel action before heading to federal circuit courts for judicial review, Oyer argued that the morass of seeking MSPB review, combined with her firing purportedly on constitutional grounds, rather than via the Civil Service Reform Act’s procedures, allow her to pursue her case before the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C. Oyer and her attorneys also argued that even if administration officials can bypass statutory removal protections when they fire inferior officers under Article II of the Constitution, the Justice Department failed to follow its own policy governing such removals, as her firing was signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. “With respect to its purported removal of Ms. Oyer, moreover, DOJ did not even use the procedures that DOJ itself maintains are necessary to effectuate a removal under Article II,” the lawsuit states. “That is because Ms. Oyer’s removal was signed only by the deputy attorney general. This distinction is significant because—on DOJ’s own telling—only the attorney general can wield the president’s Article II removal authority.” Another case challenging the Justice Department’s Article II filings, Jackler v. MSPB , is set to go before the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for oral arguments in December. ]]>