The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that President Donald Trump has the authority to fire two Democrat-appointed agency figures over the dissent of the high court’s three liberal justices. The emergency order overturns a lower court ruling that had reinstated the two officials, delivering a victory for the president in his effort to expand authority over all facets of the federal bureaucracy.
However, the justices declined the Trump administration’s request to fast-track the case and fully review it this term, postponing a decision on whether the president has the authority to dismiss the two officials permanently.
“That question is better left for resolution after full briefing and argument,” said the court’s unsigned opinion.
Instead, the challenge brought by National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Gwynne Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) member Cathy Harris will proceed through the standard process in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In the meantime, both agencies remain without the quorum needed to carry out certain official functions.
“The stay also 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 court wrote in its opinion.
The decision reflects concern over the timeline outlined by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who cautioned that following the standard legal process could delay a final resolution until well into President Trump’s term in office.
“Forcing the President to entrust his executive power to respondents for the months or years that it could take the courts to resolve this litigation would manifestly cause irreparable harm to the President and to the separation of powers,” Sauer wrote in his filings with the high court, The Hill noted
Many legal experts believe the case will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, which nearly 90 years ago established that Congress could shield certain independent agency officials from being removed without cause.
In recent years, the Court’s conservative majority has narrowed that protection. Building on those decisions, the Trump administration argues that such safeguards should not apply to members of the NLRB or MSPB—and if the Court disagrees, it should overturn the earlier precedent.
The case reflects a broader expansionist view of presidential authority, asserting that the president should wield near-total control over the entire Executive Branch, a view held by many conservatives who have argued that’s the vision the founding fathers had when they wrote the Constitution.
“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America,” says Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution.
In their dissent, the court’s three liberal justices argued that the majority was effectively allowing Trump to override established precedent “by fiat” and described the majority decision as “favoring the President over our precedent.”
“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,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The Trump administration submitted its emergency appeal to the Supreme Court after the full D.C. Circuit issued a temporary ruling that effectively reinstated Wilcox and Harris pending the next phase of the case, said The Hill.
Shortly after taking office, then-President Joe Biden fired scores of Trump appointees to several government-related panels and boards.
One of them, Roger Severino, who was appointed to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States shortly before Biden took office, sued the Biden administration over his termination. The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit tossed the suit, however, ruling that Biden had the authority as president to fire Servino.
