A unanimous federal appeals panel ruled that Nevada's acting U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah is serving illegally, the latest in a string of court decisions rejecting the administration's strategy of bypassing Senate confirmation for top prosecutors.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed on Monday that the Justice Department's maneuver to keep Chattah in her post violated federal law, upholding a lower court ruling from September. The three-judge panel found that then-Attorney General Pam Bondi's move to designate Chattah as first assistant U.S. attorney, a workaround meant to extend her tenure after her original 180-day interim term ran out, did not pass legal muster under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, the federal statute that governs temporary appointments to vacant executive branch positions.
President Trump first appointed Chattah to the Nevada post on April 1, 2025, giving her a 180-day interim window. Shortly before that window closed, Bondi appointed Chattah as first assistant U.S. attorney. The Justice Department argued that this designation allowed Chattah to serve as acting U.S. attorney for an additional 210 days under the Vacancies Reform Act, buying time while Las Vegas lawyer George Kelesis, Trump's nominee for the permanent position, worked his way through the Senate confirmation process.
The court rejected that logic outright. Under the Vacancies Reform Act, a first assistant can step into the acting role only if that person already held the first-assistant position when the vacancy originally occurred. Chattah did not. Bondi created the title for her after the fact, and the court said that was not enough.
U.S. Circuit Judge Eric Miller, himself a Trump appointee, wrote the key passage. The Washington Examiner reported his conclusion in plain terms:
"The Attorney General [can't] create a de facto Acting U.S. Attorney by delegating all of the functions and duties of the U.S. Attorney to someone else."
That line matters. The DOJ had tried a fallback argument, even if the first-assistant workaround failed, the attorney general could simply delegate all of a U.S. attorney's powers to Chattah through a separate mechanism. Miller and his colleagues shut that door, too. Fox News reported that the panel explicitly rejected the delegation theory as an alternative route to keeping Chattah in place.
The broader opinion from the three-judge panel framed the issue as a constitutional boundary question:
"These cases present the question whether the Attorney General can make someone an Acting United States Attorney, bypassing the usual requirement that a U.S. Attorney be confirmed by the Senate, by designating that person as the first assistant to an already-vacant office of U.S. Attorney. We hold that the Attorney General cannot do so."
The ruling does not remove Chattah from the building immediately. The court upheld the lower court's decision to let her remain in the position while the administration considers whether to appeal to the Supreme Court. But it does bar her from supervising or participating in three federal criminal cases. The specific cases were not identified in the ruling as reported.
The administration has shown a willingness to take fights like this to the high court. Trump recently vowed an immediate Supreme Court appeal after a separate federal panel blocked a White House construction project, and a pattern of aggressive appellate strategy has defined the administration's posture toward unfavorable lower court rulings.
Nevada is not the only state where this playbook has failed. AP News reported that the Trump administration attempted the same legal maneuver with Alina Habba in New Jersey and Bill Essayli in California, losing in both cases. The pattern is clear: courts across the country are refusing to let the executive branch sidestep the Senate's confirmation role for U.S. attorneys by manufacturing interim workarounds after the statutory clock runs out.
The underlying federal statute sets a hard limit. If no permanent U.S. attorney is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate within 120 days of a vacancy, judges of the local federal district court can appoint an interim U.S. attorney until the seat is filled. That provision exists precisely to prevent the executive branch from running an office indefinitely with an unconfirmed appointee.
Kelesis, the nominee for the permanent Nevada post, is still going through the Senate confirmation process. Nevada's Democratic senators have signaled they will not make it easy. AP News reported that they called Chattah "an extremist and an election denier" and vowed to block her if the administration sought to make the appointment permanent, though the permanent nominee is Kelesis, not Chattah.
Courts have handed the administration a series of procedural setbacks on other fronts as well. A Fifth Circuit ruling on ICE detention and separate federal decisions blocking changes to student loan forgiveness programs have underscored how aggressively the judiciary has pushed back on executive action this term.
Sen. Jacky Rosen, the Nevada Democrat, wasted no time posting a statement to X after the ruling came down:
"Sigal Chattah has always been unfit to serve as Nevada's U.S. Attorney, and I'm glad to see the Ninth Circuit agree her appointment is illegal. It's past time for her to vacate the position and leave the U.S. Attorney's office once and for all."
Rosen's language, "unfit," "illegal," "once and for all", was predictable from a senator who opposed Chattah from the start. But the ruling itself came from a panel that included a Trump appointee, and the decision was unanimous. That makes it harder for the administration to dismiss the outcome as judicial overreach from hostile Obama or Biden appointees.
Neither Chattah, the Justice Department, nor the White House responded to the ruling in any statement included in available reporting. Whether the administration will take the case to the Supreme Court remains an open question. The stay allowing Chattah to remain in office gives the DOJ a runway to decide, but the legal ground beneath the appointment is gone.
The lower court ruling that started this fight came in September from Arizona District Judge David G. Campbell. The Ninth Circuit's affirmation now means two levels of the federal judiciary have reached the same conclusion: the appointment does not comply with the law.
Meanwhile, a D.C. appeals court recently blocked a separate Pentagon policy in a divided ruling, adding to the broader picture of an administration fighting on multiple judicial fronts simultaneously.
The core problem for the White House is not any single ruling. It is the strategy itself. If the Senate confirmation process is too slow or too hostile for the administration's preferred candidates, the answer under federal law is not to invent new categories of interim authority. It is to get nominees confirmed, or accept the court-appointed alternative the statute provides.
Three courts, three states, the same result. At some point, the administration will have to stop trying to run prosecutors past the Senate and start working with it.
