The Supreme Court gave the OK Thursday to President Trump to carry out firings of Democratic appointees at some major federal watchdog agencies, saying the chief executive has wide-ranging powers to shape the workforce that carries out his policies.
The justices said laws that restrict the president’s firing power are likely unconstitutional, though they said they have not reached a final decision on that.
Thursday’s ruling is instead a blockade on lower courts that had stopped the president’s firings at the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board. The ruling allows the president to keep the officials out of their posts while the cases develop more in lower courts.
“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the president … he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents,” the court said in an unsigned opinion.
The decision is a watershed moment in presidential power, suggesting the executive’s power to hire and fire is broader than previously recognized.
The court’s three Democratic appointees dissented, saying the majority was in effect overturning a 90-year-old precedent that had ruled some so-called independent agencies can be shielded from presidential firing.
They said that was all the more egregious, given that the case came to the court on its emergency docket and hasn’t fully developed.
“Not since the 1950s (or even before) has a president, without a legitimate reason, tried to remove an officer from a classic independent agency — a multi-member, bipartisan commission exercising regulatory power whose governing statute contains a for-cause provision,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the dissenting justices.
