❓WHAT HAPPENED: A federal appeals court upheld a decision barring Alina Habba from serving as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Alina Habba, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Third Circuit Court of Appeals judges, and New Jersey district judges.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Monday, December 1, at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in New Jersey.
💬KEY QUOTE: “The delegation of all the powers of a U.S. Attorney to Habba was expressly prohibited.” – Third Circuit Court ruling.
🎯IMPACT: The ruling reinforces the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and limits the Attorney General’s ability to bypass it.
Acting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba has been disqualified from continuing in the position after a federal appeals court upheld a lower court decision on Monday. A three-judge panel for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, comprised of two Bush appointees and one Biden appointee, agreed with the plaintiffs and with New Jersey’s federal district court that Attorney General Pam Bondi had unlawfully attempted to circumvent the Federal Vacancies Reform Act when she extended Habba’s appointment as a U.S. Attorney.
The plaintiffs argued that Bondi‘s appointment of Habba as Acting U.S. Attorney, after her term as interim U.S. Attorney ended, violated their “constitutional right to be prosecuted only by a duly authorized United States Attorney” and that “the illegitimacy of Ms. Habba’s appointment undermines… fundamental due process rights.”
Habba, who had been named by President Donald J. Trump as the interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey in March, was briefly forced out of the role in late July after federal district court judges in the state voted not to extend her term. At the time, then-First Assistant U.S. Attorney Desiree Grace took over as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor.
Subsequently, Attorney General Bondi fired Grace just two days later and named Habba as her replacement as Acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. This move, according to the appeals court panel, violated procedures set out in the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, with the judges writing that “only the first assistant in place at the time the vacancy arises automatically assumes the functions and duties of the office.” The judges agreed with the lower court’s findings that federal law barred Bondi’s “delegation of all the powers of a U.S. Attorney to Habba.”
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