WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court let Republican President Donald Trump on Wednesday remove three Democratic members of the government’s top consumer product safety watchdog, boosting his power over federal agencies set up by Congress to be independent from presidential control.
Granting a Justice Department request, the justices lifted Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox’s order that had blocked Mr. Trump from dismissing three Consumer Product Safety Commission members appointed by Democratic former President Joe Biden while a legal challenge to their removal proceeds.
Maddox had ruled that Mr. Trump overstepped his authority in firing Commissioners Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr.
The Supreme Court in a brief unsigned order indicated that the Trump administration was likely to show that the president is authorized by the U.S. Constitution to remove Consumer Product Safety Commission members. It was the latest in a series of legal victories for Trump in which the Supreme Court halted lower court rulings that had blocked his actions.
The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal members dissented on Wednesday.
Justice Elena Kagan, joined by fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the court had again used its “emergency docket to destroy the independence of an independent agency, as established by Congress.”
The Consumer Product Safety Commission was created by Congress in 1972 and tasked with reducing the risk to consumers of injury or death from defective or harmful products. The agency sets safety standards, conducts product-safety investigations and issues recalls of hazardous products.
To establish the five-member commission’s independence from direct White House control, Congress authorized the president to fire commissioners only for neglect of duty or malfeasance, not at will.
Nicolas Sansone, an attorney for the fired commissioners, vowed to continue fighting for their reinstatement.
“The Supreme Court’s intervention deprives the public of important voices on the Consumer Product Safety Commission and sows substantial legal uncertainty,” Sansone said.
After being notified in May that Mr. Trump had fired them, Ms. Boyle, Mr. Hoehn-Saric and Mr. Trumka sued, arguing that their removals were without basis and that Trump had exceeded his authority. The staggered, seven-year terms of the commissioners were not set to expire until October 2025, 2027 and 2028, respectively, according to court filings.
The Justice Department argued that the law shielding commissioners from being fired except for good cause violates the president’s removal authority under the Constitution’s provision delineating executive power.
A 1935 PRECEDENT
Mr. Maddox, a Biden appointee, sided with the commissioners in a June 13 ruling and ordered their reinstatement. The judge upheld the commission’s removal protections under a 1935 Supreme Court precedent in a case called Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that preserved similar protections for U.S. Federal Trade Commission members.
Ms. Kagan wrote that Wednesday’s decision “all but overturned” the Humphrey’s Executor precedent.
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on July 1 denied the administration’s request to halt Maddox’s reinstatement order. This prompted the Justice Department’s emergency filing to the Supreme Court.
The commissioners in their Supreme Court filing had urged the justices to reject the administration’s request. They said that allowing the dismissals would deprive the American public of critical consumer safety expertise and oversight.
In May, the Supreme Court in a similar case allowed Trump to remove two Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board – despite job protections for these posts – while litigation challenging those removals proceeded.
The court in that ruling said the Constitution gives the president wide latitude to fire government officials who wield executive power on his behalf and that the administration “is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power.”
The court on Wednesday said that the Consumer Product Safety Commission “exercises executive power in a similar manner as the National Labor Relations Board.”
In her dissent, Ms. Kagan criticized the conservative majority for using the court’s emergency docket – an abbreviated mode of adjudication involving shorter-than-usual written briefs and no oral argument – to “override Congress’s decisions about how to structure administrative agencies so that they can perform their prescribed duties.”
“By allowing the President to remove Commissioners for no reason other than their party affiliation, the majority has negated Congress’s choice of agency bipartisanship and independence,” Ms. Kagan wrote.
“By means of such actions, this court may facilitate the permanent transfer of authority, piece by piece by piece, from one branch of government to another,” Ms. Kagan added.
The Supreme Court has sided with Trump in a series of cases on an emergency basis since he returned to office in January, including clearing the way for his administration to pursue mass government job cuts, gut the Department of Education and implement some of his hardline immigration policies. – Reuters
