Thursday, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court strengthened the offer of President Donald Trump on Thursday to assume the full control of executive branch agencies, giving a green light – for the moment – to his dismissal of the heads of the National Council for Labor Relations and the Merit Systems Protection Council, which he dismissed without cause.
A district court had taken the side of Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board, concluding their dismissals of their independent, probably illegal agencies and had to be reversed.
In a 6-3 decision, the High Court granted Trump’s request to suspension of the lower court to restore Harris and Wilcox, at least for the moment.
“The government risks a greater risk of prejudice to an order allowing an removed officer to continue to exercise the executive power that an officer wrongly is unable to be unable to carry out his statutory duty,” said the majority.
The dispute is currently making its way thanks to a federal court of appeal and could finally return to the Supreme Court on the merits.
The federal law and the precedent of the Supreme Court explicitly prohibits the president from withdrawing the heads of these independent advisory agencies without reason in most cases – but the conservatives and the administration have long argued that the rule is unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 17, 2024.
J. Scott Applewhite / AP
Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissident from the decision.
“The order of today promotes the president of our previous one; and he does it without restriction by the rules of briefing and argument – and the passage of time – was to discipline our decision -making,” wrote Kagan. “I would deny the president’s request. I would do it according to the will of the Congress, the fundamental decision of this Court approving the protections for independent causes and the 90 years that followed the history of this nation.”
The case was closely considered as one of the most publicized tests of the president’s power to control the independent agencies created by the congress and designed to be isolated from the policy.
Particular emphasis was placed on the potential implications of the case for the federal reserve. Trump made his dissatisfaction with the president of the federal reserve Jerome Powell well known and threatened to try to dismiss him, even if the appointment to the president has historically been protected against the presidential interference without reason.
The majority of the Supreme Court hosted these concerns in its order.
“Respondents Gwynne Wilcox and Cathy Harris maintain that the arguments in this case necessarily imply the constitutionality of referral protections because of the causes of the Council of Governors of the Federal Reserve or other members of the Federal Committee of the Open Market. We do not agree,” wrote the majority. “The federal reserve is an almost unique structured-proof entity which follows in the distinct historical tradition of the first and second banks of the United States.”
