Trump can remove three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission that were appointed by his Democratic predecessor, former President Joe Biden, with the court’s ruling.
Trump was prohibited from doing so by a lower court’s decision, which was overturned because he had overstepped his authority by requesting their removals.
After being fired from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a private organization established by Congress, in May, Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka Jr. sued the Trump administration.
Their seven-year terms were scheduled to run out in 2025, 2027, and 2028, respectively.
They claimed in their lawsuit that Trump had overstepped his authority by firing them without cause. According to a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor, the president cannot appoint independent board members without providing a justification.
Additionally, the commission members claimed that the public would lose valuable expertise and oversight if they were fired.
However, the Department of Justice has argued that the president’s constitutional authority is undermined by his decision to appoint members of the executive branch.
According to the Justice Department, the executive branch includes even independent organizations like the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
On July 2, US District Judge Matthew Maddox issued an order preventing the three Democratic appointees’ dismissal while their case was pending, which gave the Trump administration a victory.
However, Trump’s Justice Department sent an urgent appeal to the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority agreed with the president in a brief, unsigned order.
The majority of the time, according to the majority, the government was more likely to suffer if it allowed fired employees to continue serving in the executive branch than illegally removed them while their legal cases were pending.
However, the three left-leaning justices of the court disagreed and criticized the decision as a weakened separation of powers. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, according to Justice Elena Kagan, was established as a result of a legislative act, answers both the president and the legislature.
The majority has stifled Congress’s choice of agency bipartisanship and independence, according to Kagan, saying that by allowing the President to remove Commissioners for no reason other than their party affiliation.
She continued, noting that the court’s decision on Wednesday was one of a string of decisions that resulted in “an increase of executive power at the expense of legislative authority.”
The Trump administration has frequently used a maximalist interpretation of presidential authority to exert greater control over federal agencies that were created and funded by Congress. The Supreme Court, which has six conservative members, has largely supported these initiatives.
As their cases progressed, the court granted Trump the right to remove Democratic members from the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board in a similar case in May.
