A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled on Tuesday that Kari Lake, the former agency head tapped by President Donald Trump, acted illegally when she fired Michael Abramowitz from his post as director of Voice of America, the U.S.-funded international broadcaster.

In its ruling, the panel handed Abramowitz a legal victory by upholding the August 2025 decision of U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth. The unanimous vote came from Judges Sri Srinivasan and Cornelia Pillard, both appointees of President Barack Obama, and Judge Florence Y. Pan, an appointee of President Joe Biden.

Abramowitz was dismissed by Lake in August 2025 after refusing her ultimatum to either accept a demotion to a lower-level position in North Carolina or be fired. He called the termination "illegal." According to The Washington Post, Abramowitz had already filed suit against the government over Lake's attempts to tear down the international broadcaster, which was founded in 1942 to push back against Nazi propaganda, and sought to have his firing set right.

Lamberth, a Reagan appointee who had a running feud with Lake and once threatened to hold her in contempt, agreed with Abramowitz that the dismissal was unlawful. In an opinion issued in August 2025, the judge granted a motion for partial summary judgment and placed a permanent injunction on Abramowitz's removal. Lamberth determined that only the International Broadcasting Advisory Board, a Senate-confirmed entity that Trump did away with at the start of his second term, was empowered to fire the VOA director.

Writing in the published appellate opinion, Pillard described the protections at issue as "a durable barrier against any breach of the firewall protecting the journalistic integrity of Voice of America and the affiliate networks," rather than standard employment law. Because the ruling came as a published decision, it carries precedential weight in future cases before the circuit, and it frames the dispute over the director's job as a test of the safeguards meant to keep the broadcaster's newsroom independent of political direction.

In a statement, Abramowitz said he is "gratified" and wants to return to work. "My lawyers and I are carefully studying the decision to determine next steps," he said. "But there is no longer any reason for the government to prevent me from doing the job for which I was legally installed on a bipartisan basis more than two years ago."

The case is the most recent in a string of setbacks for the Trump administration in its effort to dismantle Voice of America. The organization has been severely weakened under Trump and Lake, with its broadcasting capacity sharply reduced and hundreds of staff placed on paid administrative leave for a year and a half.

In March, Lamberth nullified many of Lake's actions after finding that she was running the U.S. Agency for Global Media, VOA's parent agency, in an illegal fashion. Trump then put forward State Department official Sarah B. Rogers as a formal nominee to also serve as CEO of the agency, but the Senate has yet to confirm her. With the appellate ruling now in place, the immediate questions to watch are whether Abramowitz is returned to his post and whether the Senate acts on Rogers's confirmation — the two personnel decisions that will shape the leadership of the weakened broadcaster going forward.

Source: Alternet