When the Department of Homeland Security fired Mary Comans, FEMA's chief financial officer, in early 2025, it did not do so quietly. Officials accused her of misusing disaster funds by authorizing payments for New York City migrant shelters, a charge broadcast as funding 'luxury hotels for migrants' [1][2]. On July 17, a federal judge ruled that the firing itself broke the Constitution [2].
US District Judge Michael Nachmanoff found that the termination 'deprived her of both property and liberty without due process' [2]. Comans was a career civil servant, protected by the notice-and-process procedures Congress requires before such employees can be removed - protections the administration bypassed, invoking the president's Article II power instead [1].
The judge rejected that theory directly. 'For the last 140 years,' he wrote, 'the Supreme Court has affirmed the president does not have plenary power to remove inferior officers' [1]. The claim of an at-will power to fire career staff, central to much of the administration's remaking of the federal workforce, did not survive contact with the case [1].
The remedy is narrow but pointed. Comans does not get her job back automatically; she gets a name-clearing hearing, with discovery and a full evidentiary proceeding, and the parties have fourteen days to propose how it runs [1]. The 'luxury hotels' accusation, made in public, will now be tested in court [2].
Her attorney called it 'a resounding victory for the rule of law and our vital civil service,' adding that 'no administration is above the law' [2]. For Comans, the ruling is a chance to answer a charge that cost her a career; for the removal-power theory behind it, it is a wall [1][2].
