The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to fire without cause members of the national labor boards for federal employees and workers, despite lower court judges finding that the terminations likely violated federal law.
The unsigned, two-page decision addressed a tangle of lower court orders on the firings of Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board while the cases work their way through the court system.
Congress put in protections that the members cannot be removed except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The majority in Thursday’s decision cited a recent Supreme Court decision upholding the president’s ability to remove federal officials at will, despite laws Congress passed protecting those officials, when those officials wield executive power outside of “narrow exceptions.”
