Politics
JUST IN: Supreme Court Hands Trump A Major Victory With 6-3 Ruling
The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision Thursday that President Donald Trump has the authority to fire independent federal regulators in a major affirmation of the executive branch’s authority.
The high court granted the Trump administration’s request to pause orders by federal judges that required government officials to allow board members at two independent federal agencies to stay in office after President Trump attempted to fire them. Chief Justice John Roberts had already issued an administrative stay, which temporarily put those orders on hold while the court reviewed the administration’s requests.
In effect, Thursday’s ruling extends that order while the litigation continues at the appellate court level and if necessary, the Supreme Court for a final ruling.
In an unsigned two-page order, the high court explained that the decision “reflects our judgment that the Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.”
The decision broke down along ideological lines, with Justice Elena Kagan dissenting from the court’s order in an eight-page opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan explained that she would have turned down the Trump Administration’s request, calling the order “nothing short of extraordinary,” according to a summary from SCOTUS Blog.
At issue was Trump’s attempt to remove two federal officials, Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris of the Merits Systems Protection Board, earlier this year. Both women had been appointed by former President Joe Biden to terms that were set to expire in 2028.
Wilcox and Harris argued that their firings violated federal law before a D.C. court, arguing that they could only be terminated from their positions for good cause. Two different federal judges sided with the pair and ordered the Trump Administration to allow them to continue in their current roles.
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later blocked those orders, though the full appeals court reversed that decision and allowed Wilcox and Harris to remain in office.
On April 9, the Trump Administration petitioned the Supreme Court to either put the orders on hold or issue a ruling on the merits of the cases. D. John Sauer, the Trump Administration’s solicitor general, argued that the orders disputed an important constitutional question by limiting the president’s ability to supervise agency heads who exercise power on behalf of the executive branch.
Sauer argued that Trump’s ability to fire the regulators was not prohibited by Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 Supreme Court case that allowed Congress to create independent, multi-member regulatory agencies whose commissioners can only be removed for cause. The solicitor general argued that the case simply recognized a narrow exception to the president’s removal power that only relates to multi-member expert agencies.
Both Harris and Wilcox argued that allowing the order to remain in place would allow Trump to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, though the high court disagreed. The federal reserve, the court ruled, “is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”
