Supreme Court Lets Trump Oust Top Consumer-Safety Officials (1)

A divided US Supreme Court let President Donald Trump temporarily remove three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, extending a line of decisions giving the White House more control over independent agencies.

Over dissents from the court’s three liberals, the justices on Wednesday put on hold a federal district court decision that said Trump was bound by job protections created by Congress for CPSC members. US District Judge Matthew Maddox’s June 13 decision had reinstated the three commissioners after Trump fired them in May.

The order is the latest to chip away at a landmark 1935 Supreme Court ruling that said Congress could shield at least some high-ranking officials from being fired to insulate them from political pressures. The ruling, known as Humphrey’s Executor, allowed the independent agencies that came to proliferate across the US government.

The Supreme Court in May let Trump remove members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board. The court suggested in that decision that Trump’s power wouldn’t extend to firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell — at least in the absence of a legitimate reason like misconduct.

The majority on Wednesday said the CPSC case was “squarely controlled” by the earlier ruling. Although the court said it wasn’t conclusively deciding the merits of either case, the two-paragraph order said the president should be allowed to oust officials in the meantime.

“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 said, repeating a line from the earlier decision.

Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the ruling, saying the court had “all but overturned” the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor ruling. “Once again, this court uses its emergency docket to destroy the independence of an independent agency, as established by Congress,” Kagan wrote for the group.

Job Protections

Federal law says CPSC commissioners can be fired from their seven-year terms only for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” Trump nonetheless fired CPSC Commissioners Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr. on May 8 and 9. Maddox ordered all three reinstated on June 13, citing the Humphrey’s Executor ruling.

The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the administration’s request to put Maddox’s ruling on hold, prompting the government to turn to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that the president could fire the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saying the Constitution’s separation of powers requires such a powerful executive branch figure to be accountable to the president.

Defenders of Humphrey’s Executor say the Constitution gives Congress the flexibility to create agencies that rely on expert leadership and are independent from the White House.

The case is Trump v. Boyle, 25A11.

(Updates with excerpts from order, dissent starting in fifth paragraph.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

Sara Forden

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