Chief Justice John Roberts has issued an order allowing President Donald Trump to temporarily remove officials from two independent federal agencies while the Supreme Court decides a potentially landmark case on presidential power.
The Wednesday order puts on hold a lower court decision that had reinstated National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris to their positions. Roberts indicated the temporary stay will remain in effect until either he or the full court makes a longer-term determination.
The administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer, argued in filings that “the president should not be forced to delegate his executive power to agency heads who are demonstrably at odds with the administration’s policy objectives for a single day.”
At the heart of the dispute is a 1935 Supreme Court ruling known as Humphrey’s Executor, which established Congress’s ability to protect certain high-ranking officials from presidential removal. This precedent has served as the foundation for independent agencies throughout the federal government.
The Supreme Court narrowed this precedent in 2020 when it ruled the president had authority to dismiss the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s director at will, invalidating the employment safeguards that lawmakers had established.
The current cases raise the question of whether the same reasoning applies to multi-member agencies. According to court documents, the Trump administration plans to ask the court to overturn Humphrey’s Executor entirely if necessary to allow the firings.
The removals have significant operational implications. With Wilcox and Harris gone, both the NLRB and the three-member Merit Systems Protection Board lack the quorum needed to function. The MSPB, which handles labor-related claims from federal employees, has recently presided over challenges to Trump’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce.
Roberts has requested that the removed officials respond to Trump’s request by April 15.
Legal experts note that the case could ultimately affect whether Trump has authority to remove other independent agency officials, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. The administration is simultaneously defending against a lawsuit filed by two Democratic FTC commissioners whom Trump also fired.
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