After Being Forced Out by Trump, Black Federal Officials Are Taking Him to Court

In 1995, Alvin Brown’s grandparents became two of the 40,000 people who die in car crashes each year. They were going to a funeral service when their van crashed along Interstate 95 South near Manning, South Carolina. After their vehicle hydroplaned, a design flaw caused its doors to open, and they were ejected from the […] The post After Being Forced Out by Trump, Black Federal Officials Are Taking Him to Court appeared first on Capital B News.

May 11, 2026 - 13:01

After Being Forced Out by Trump, Black Federal Officials Are Taking Him to Court

In 1995, Alvin Brown’s grandparents became two of the 40,000 people who die in car crashes each year. They were going to a funeral service when their van crashed along Interstate 95 South near Manning, South Carolina. After their vehicle hydroplaned, a design flaw caused its doors to open, and they were ejected from the vehicle.

“I made a promise back then,” said Brown, who was the first Black mayor of Jacksonville, Florida, “that if I can ever do anything about safety, I will do it.”

In 2022, that promise eventually carried Brown to the National Transportation Safety Board, the independent federal agency tasked with investigating civil transportation accidents and offering safety recommendations. But Brown’s efforts have been thwarted. In May 2025, the Trump administration removed him from his post as the vice chairman of the board.

Brown’s firing didn’t occur in a vacuum. Robert Primus, who was the first Black chairman of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, an independent federal agency with oversight of railroads, also challenged his August 2025 dismissal. Brown and Primus were the only Black board members at their agencies when they were removed.

They filed lawsuits against the White House, arguing that they were fired in defiance of the “good cause” protections guaranteed by law for people in those kinds of positions and that such actions threaten the authority of and public trust in independent agencies. Brown and Primus also added discrimination claims, arguing that race played a role in their dismissals, which they say reflect a broader trend of the administration targeting Black officials. The administration has removed, or attempted to remove, four other Black members of multimember agencies, according to Brown’s complaint.

“There is a clear and troubling pattern here — across the independent agencies, Black commissioners and board members have been removed unlawfully at a disproportionately high rate,” Brown told Capital B. “It makes no sense to literally target Black leaders, which undermines the integrity, credibility, and effectiveness of these agencies.”

The White House has defended the firings, maintaining that President Donald Trump acted within his legal authority and that these decisions were based not on race but rather on performance.

“The only factor guiding the Trump administration’s personnel decisions is competence — lawful removals at the NTSB and STB are no different,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told Capital B in a statement.

Generally, the president can only remove a board member for incompetence, incapacity, or another “good cause.” Brown and Primus’ complaints say that no reason was given for their dismissals.

“The public deserves to know”

Recent research by Democracy Forward, a national legal organization that filed the racial discrimination claims on behalf of Brown and Primus, shows that the administration’s actions have significantly reshaped the racial composition of independent federal agencies.

Before the dismissals, the organization found, the boards of 13 multimember independent agencies were 74% white and 16% Black among a total of 50 members. After the removals, those same boards became 90% white and 7% Black, with 30 members remaining.

Additionally, Democracy Forward found that six of the eight Black commissioners on these boards, or 75%, had been fired, compared with 10 of the 37 white commissioners, or 27%.

Brown and Primus also have underscored the uneven treatment they’ve received within their respective agencies.

Federal law requires partisan balance, and limits how many board members can belong to the same party at one time. Brown and Primus are Democrats. Primus was nominated to the board by Trump in 2020, elevated to chairman by President Joe Biden in 2024, and later removed from the board in 2025, when Trump returned to office, though his term wasn’t supposed to expire until the end of 2027. A white Democratic member, Karen Hedlund, remained on the board.

Brown faced a similar dynamic. He was nominated to the board by Biden in 2022 and again in 2023, before Biden elevated him to vice chairman in 2024. Trump removed him from the board in 2025. One white Democratic member, Thomas B. Chapman, remained on the board after his term expired in 2023, which is standard practice until a replacement is found. Brown, however, was dismissed, though his term was scheduled to run through the end of 2026. A second white Democratic member, Jennifer Homendy, also remains on the board.

Trump selected John DeLeeuw, who’s white, to replace Brown.

Brown and Primus aren’t alone. The administration has ousted, or taken steps to oust, four other Black members of multimember agencies: Lisa Cook of the Federal Reserve, Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board, Charlotte Burrows of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Travis LeBlanc of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

These removals, both actual and attempted, come as the administration faces scrutiny over the impact that its overhaul of the federal government is having on Black Americans, who prior to 2025 were about 18% of the federal workforce and 14% of the total U.S. population.

For Brown, the lawsuit is about more than reclaiming his seat on the board. It’s also about what he believes is at stake if people remain silent.

“I take this lawsuit very seriously, not for me to be reinstated back in my job, but because the public deserves to know what is happening,” said Brown, who added that he’s standing on the shoulders of many people who came before him. “I’m not just fighting for myself. I’m also fighting for the next generation — so that they won’t have to deal with these issues.”