The independent agencies that protect the rights of private-sector and federal workers lost their ability to fully function after an appeals court temporarily paused rulings that had reversed their terminations by President
A divided US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia panel Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency request for a stay, grounding National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris. Their removals drop both boards below the minimum number of members necessary to issue decisions.
The legal battle over the president’s removal authority is likely headed to the US Supreme Court. That would allow the justices to determine whether 90-year-old precedent in Humphrey’s Executor v. US will survive in any meaningful way after the direct assault triggered by Trump’s unprecedented spree of firing agency leaders.
The circuit court’s stay order is poised to have a profound impact on workers. Federal law channels employee disputes to the two labor boards rather than federal court, meaning each agency losing its quorum robs workers of their ability to vindicate their rights.
The NLRB handles cases related to private-sector organizing, while the MSPB adjudicates disputes over firings and other employment actions in the federal sector—an issue that has expanded in scope as the Trump administration has fired roughly 25,000 federal workers, with more layoffs planned.
But it’s unclear how long both agencies will remain hamstrung.
Hours after the D.C. Circuit panel issued its ruling, Wilcox and Harris asked it to pause the decision while they seek en banc review.
Litigation Goes On
The circuit’s active judges—seven of whom were appointed by Democratic presidents, compared to four appointed by Republicans—will consider Wilcox and Harris’ forthcoming requests to rethink whether to halt the reinstatement orders as the case proceeds on the merits.
The D.C. Circuit motions panel split along partisan lines in its unsigned order granting the Trump administration’s stay request, with the Republican appointees controlling the outcome. Judges
Regardless of whether the panel agrees to pause its ruling, if Wilcox and Harris can’t persuade the en banc panel, then the NLRB and MSPB would be without quora until new Trump appointees come on board. Another option would involve the fired board members successfully enlisting the Supreme Court to block the stay order.
The D.C. Circuit could reinstate them later when it rules on their legal challenges to being fired.
A D.C. Circuit merits panel is scheduled to hear oral argument May 16 in the cases that pit the president’s power to fire independent agency officials without cause against Congress’ authority to place narrow constraints on when those officials can be removed. The judges who will sit on that panel have not been announced.
Humphrey’s Executor
Trump has also dismissed officials with for-cause removal shields at the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and the Office of Special Counsel.
On Friday, Walker filed a concurring opinion that endorses the Trump administration’s legal theory that a pair of Supreme Court decisions from 2020 and 2021 provide the president with the authority to fire Wilcox and Harris, regardless of their statutory removal protections that lower courts said were valid under Humphrey’s Executor.
“Though those cases did not overturn Humphrey’s Executor, their holdings relied on an exceptionally narrow reading of it,” Walker said.
Henderson agreed with many of Walker’s points about presidential removal authority in her concurring opinion, but added that she views “the government’s likelihood of success on the merits as a slightly closer call.”
Millett sharply criticized the panel majority’s stay order in her dissent, arguing that it creates instability and turmoil rather than warding them off.
“I cannot join a decision that uses a hurried and preliminary first-look ruling by this court to announce a revolution in the law that the Supreme Court has expressly avoided, and to trap in legal limbo millions of employees and employers whom the law says must go to these boards for the resolution of their employment disputes,” she said.
The cases are Wilcox v. Trump, D.C. Cir., No. 25-05057, 3/28/25 and Harris v. Bessent, D.C. Cir., No. 25-05037, 3/28/25.
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