A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration’s firing of two Democrats who served on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was illegal.

Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled the January terminations of Travis LeBlanc and Edward Felten were null and void. A third Democrat fired from the board at that time, Sharon Bradford Franklin, is not named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The PCLOB serves as a watchdog for intelligence community infringements into Americans’ civil liberties.

Board members are granted six-year terms upon confirmation to the executive branch panel, although the law allows them to stay for up to a year after their terms expire. LeBlanc, in particular, was set to remain on until 2028.

While U.S. law doesn’t expressly block the president from firing members, the court said the oversight board’s design — as a nonpartisan, expert body — conflicts with the idea of at-will presidential removal.

“The Constitution gives President [Donald] Trump the power to remove personnel who exercise his executive authority. The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement to Nextgov/FCW .

The ruling comes as Congress is slated next year to debate reauthorizing a contested surveillance program that allows the intelligence community and law enforcement to collect communications of foreign targets abroad without a warrant.

The ordinance — governed by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — permits U.S. spies to collect foreign targets’ conversations, including those that incidentally include U.S. persons. Privacy hawks seeking to reform the statute have often cited cases where the authority was found to have been abused by law enforcement, and the PCLOB has played a major role in surfacing those abuses because its members can review classified data affiliated with the 702 collection process.

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, has been a historic skeptic of the 702 statute and, in her confirmation hearing, said that a warrant requirement should be instated for spy agency queries of U.S. person data swept up in the program. FBI Director Kash Patel, whose views on Section 702 notably run opposite to that of Gabbard, also closed a bureau office established in 2020 that’s focused on uncovering surveillance misuses, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The board firings and the administration’s response to Wednesday’s ruling could test how the White House and national security leaders approach the spying power in the months ahead, as weakening oversight bodies across the government may strengthen calls to shut the program down altogether over inadequate accountability measures being kept in place.

The board at a full slate normally has five members. Only four people were in place at the time of the terminations, but a three-member quorum is required to conduct oversight business. The lone Republican on the board, Beth Williams, was not terminated when the January firings commenced.

“A robust and independent PCLOB is particularly important given its role in overseeing national security programs that lack public transparency and have a history of abuse,“ said Alexandra Reeve Givens, head of the Center for Democracy & Technology. “We welcome Judge Walton’s decision today, which should enable PCLOB to return to a full quorum so it can continue its work to check government surveillance powers and enable American companies to exchange data with countries around the world.”