Labor board member retires, leaving a razor-thin quorum

The Merit Systems Protection Board will be down a board member as of Friday, leaving its quorum on a knife’s edge. 

Board member and Biden appointee Raymond Limon will retire on Friday nearly three years after being confirmed to the quasi-judicial agency by a unanimous Senate voice vote, the board said in a statement. 

The retirement follows efforts by the Trump administration to fire MSPB board member Cathy Harris this month after it stripped Limon of his vice chair position and named Republican board member Henry Kerner acting chair.

Harris later filed suit against the White House to block her removal, stating that the Trump administration did not provide a justification as required by law. A federal judge agreed to let Harris temporarily remain chairwoman while the case proceeds, with a hearing scheduled for March 3.

In a statement announcing Limon’s retirement, MSPB stated that the loss of a board member would not result in a loss of quorum. And thanks, in part, to an interim final rule established last fall, a single board member can conduct some of the MSPB’s operational work, as well as some staff in the event no board members are available.  

Limon came to the board in 2022 with Tristan Leavitt, providing MSPB with its first two-member quorum since January 2017. In the interim, MSPB was unable to hear employee appeals cases over labor decisions within the federal workforce and a backlog of more than 3,500 pending cases quickly built up. 

Leavitt later left the board after working with Limon to quickly streamline some of the agency’s processes to address the mountain of unresolved cases. Limon, with Harris and Kerner, helped nearly eliminate the backlog by October 2024.    

Limon most recently granted a 45-day stay in a case where the Office of Special Counsel appealed the firing of six federal employees fired by the Trump administration as part of a massive reduction of the probationary workforce. 

His ruling reinstated the six employees’ jobs and preceded a federal court decision Thursday to temporarily rescind the mass firings of all other probationary federal employees. 

“Ray Limon is the consummate civil servant, with a heart of gold. We were so lucky to have his expertise, compassion, and good cheer at the Board, his latest stop in a long and distinguished career in the Federal government,” said Harris in a statement. “He arrived in 2022 when, after five years without a quorum, the Board confronted a massive inherited inventory of 3,800 pending appeals. Ray was instrumental in the adjudication of virtually the entire backlog in less than three years. I wish him the very best.” 

“Over the past eight months, I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside Ray,” Kerner said in a statement. “From day one, he made me feel truly welcome, and I quickly came to appreciate both his good humor and deep commitment to MSPB’s mission and staff. While we will certainly miss him, I wish him nothing but the best in his well-earned retirement.”