Supreme Court declines to reinstate independent agency board members fired by President Donald Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Thursday said President Donald Trump likely has the authority to fire independent agency board members, endorsing a robust view of presidential power.

But the court suggested that it could block an attempt to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who Trump has complained has not cut interest rates aggressively.

The court’s action essentially extended an order Chief Justice John Roberts issued in April that had the effect of removing two board members who Trump fired from agencies that deal with labor issues, including one with a key role for federal workers as Trump aims to drastically downsize the workforce.

The firings have left both agencies without enough board members to take final actions on issues before them, as Trump has not sought to appoint replacements.

The decision Thursday keeps on hold an appellate ruling that had temporarily reinstated Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

While not a final ruling, the court said in an unsigned order that the Constitution appears to give the president the authority to fire the board members "without cause.”

The court’s three liberal justices dissented. "Not since the 1950s (or even before) has a President, without a legitimate reason, tried to remove an officer from a classic independent agency,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The court refused to reinstate Harris and Wilcox while their cases play out in the courts over warnings from their lawyers that their action would signal that Trump is free to fire members of every independent agency, including the Federal Reserve Board.

“That way lies chaos,” lawyer Neal Katyal wrote in a high court filing on behalf of Harris.

Defending Trump at the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that firing Fed governors was a “distinct question” that is not presented in this case.

Trump has mused about firing Powell and his remark in April that the central bank leader’s “termination cannot come fast enough” caused a stock market selloff. Trump then said he had no plans to fire Powell.

The conservative justices appeared to agree, noting that the Federal Reserve “is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity.”

The immediate issue confronting the court was whether the board members, both initially appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, can stay in their jobs while the larger fight continues over what to do with a 90-year-old Supreme Court decision known as Humphrey’s Executor. In that case from 1935, the court unanimously held that presidents cannot fire independent board members without cause.

Kagan wrote that her colleagues were telegraphing what would happen. "The impatience to get on with things—to now hand the President the most unitary, meaning also the most subservient, administration since Herbert Hoover (and maybe ever)—must reveal how that eventual decision will go,” she wrote.

The New Deal era case led to the creation of many agencies and bolstered others that were run by bipartisan boards that relied on expertise and were, to a degree, independent of presidential control, Kagan wrote.

But the ruling has long rankled conservative legal theorists, who argue it wrongly curtails the president’s power. Roberts was part of the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court that already has narrowed its reach in a 2020 decision.

In its emergency appeal, the administration had suggested the justices should take up and decide the broader issue of presidential power. But the court ignored Sauer’s suggestion of a hearing in May, with a decision by early summer, preferring to let the case proceed on its normal path.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 7-4 to return Wilcox and Harris to their jobs while their cases play out. The action of the full appeals court reversed a judgment from a three-judge panel that had allowed the firings to go forward.

The NLRB resolves hundreds of unfair labor practice cases every year. Wilcox was the first Black woman to serve on the NLRB in its 90-year history. She first joined the board in 2021, and the Senate confirmed her in September 2023 to serve a second term, expected to last five years.

The other board in the case reviews disputes from federal workers and could be a significant stumbling block as the administration seeks to carry out its workforce cuts.

The board members’ reinstatement “causes grave and irreparable harm to the President and to our Constitution’s system of separated powers,” Sauer wrote. Harris and Wilcox are removable “at will” by the president, he wrote.

In the lower courts, Wilcox’s attorneys said Trump could not fire her without notice, a hearing or identifying any “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office” on her part.

Perhaps foreshadowing the coming confrontation, the lawyers argued that the administration’s “only path to victory” was to persuade the Supreme Court to “adopt a more expansive view of presidential power.”

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Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.