President William Ruto has secured a legal reprieve after the High Court upheld his decision to reappoint Cabinet Secretaries he had dismissed following the 2024 anti-government protests.
In a split decision, a three-judge bench ruled that the President did not violate the Constitution by bringing back some of the Cabinet Secretaries he had previously sent home, saying dismissal from office does not permanently bar an individual from future appointment.
The judges rejected arguments by petitioners who claimed Ruto acted unconstitutionally by reappointing some members of his former Cabinet after announcing its dissolution in July 2024 in the wake of nationwide protests.
The petitioners had argued that once the Cabinet was dissolved, the President could not lawfully return some of the same individuals to office, particularly after citing governance concerns as the reason for sending them home.
However, the court found that the Constitution does not prohibit a President from reappointing a former Cabinet Secretary, provided the appointment follows the law.
Even so, the ruling was not an outright victory for the Head of State.
The same bench declared that the current Cabinet still falls short of the constitutional two-thirds gender rule and directed President Ruto to reconstitute it within 120 days to comply with Article 27(8) of the Constitution.
The judges noted that women occupy only seven of the 25 positions considered in determining the Cabinet’s composition, below the constitutional threshold requiring that no more than two-thirds of members of an appointive body be of the same gender.
The judgment stems from a petition filed by Katiba Institute alongside other civil society organisations, which challenged both the legality of the reconstituted Cabinet and its failure to meet constitutional requirements on gender representation.
The ruling now leaves President Ruto with a fresh balancing act. While the court has cleared the way for his reappointed Cabinet Secretaries to remain in office, he must still reshuffle or make new appointments within the next four months to comply with the Constitution.