The nation’s highest court has frequently ruled in favour of Trump’s expansive interpretation of presidential powers.
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that President Donald Trump can remove three Democratic members of a consumer safety watchdog, handing him a win in his efforts to concentrate more power in the hands of the executive.
The court’s decision allows Trump to boot three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission appointed by his Democratic predecessor, former President Joe Biden.
That ruling reverses a lower court decision barring Trump from doing so, on the basis that he had overstepped his authority by seeking their removals.
Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr had sued the Trump administration in May after being terminated from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, an independent body created by Congress.
Their seven-year terms were set to expire in 2025, 2027 and 2028, respectively.
In their lawsuit, they argued that Trump had exceeded his powers as president by firing them without cause. A 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor holds that the president cannot fire members of an independent board without providing a legitimate justification.
The commission members also said that their firing would deprive the public of vital expertise and oversight.
The Department of Justice, however, has maintained that preventing the president from firing members of the executive branch undercuts his constitutional authority.
Even independent agencies like the Consumer Product Safety Commission fall under the executive branch, the Justice Department pointed out.
The Trump administration’s argument was dealt a defeat on July 2, when US District Judge Matthew Maddox issued an order blocking the dismissal of the three Democratic appointees while their case proceeded.
But Trump’s Justice Department made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority sided with the president in a brief, unsigned order.
The majority wrote that the government risked greater harm by allowing fired employees to remain in the executive branch than by removing them, even wrongfully, while their court cases proceeded.
The court’s three left-leaning justices, however, issued a dissent that denounced the ruling as an erosion of the separation of powers. Justice Elena Kagan pointed out that the Consumer Product Safety Commission was created by an act of Congress and answers both to the legislature and the president.
“By allowing the President to remove Commissioners for no reason other than their party affiliation, the majority has negated Congress’s choice of agency bipartisanship and independence,” Kagan wrote.
She added that the court’s decision on Wednesday was part of a series of rulings that amounted to “an increase of executive power at the expense of legislative authority”.
The Trump administration has sought to exercise greater control over federal agencies created and funded by Congress, often using a maximalist interpretation of presidential powers to do so. The Supreme Court, which has six conservative members, has mostly ruled in favour of such efforts.
In a similar case in May, the court allowed Trump to remove Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board as their cases moved forward.
The Supreme Court also ruled earlier this month that the Trump administration’s efforts to hollow out the Department of Education through a campaign of mass firings could move forward.
