The Supreme Court on April 9 temporarily paused two lower court rulings that blocked President Donald Trump from firing members of independent labor boards.
The order came mere hours after the Trump administration filed an emergency application in Trump v. Wilcox and Bessent v. Harris seeking to stay the lower court orders.
Chief Justice John Roberts, acting on behalf of the court, halted the orders by two Washington-based federal judges that blocked the president’s firings of Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board before their terms expire.
The court’s order, called an administrative stay, gives the Supreme Court more time to consider the administration’s request for a block as litigation plays out.
Wilcox was appointed to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by President Joe Biden in 2021 after Senate confirmation. She was reappointed in 2023.
Under the National Labor Relations Act, the NLRB hears complaints about employers engaged in unfair labor practices.
Trump ordered her fired on Jan. 27 and notified her by email.
According to the application, the email said the NLRB was “not presently fulfilling its responsibility to the American people,” and that it would be in a better position to comply with administration objectives “with personnel of [Trump’s] own selection.”
The email said Wilcox “had not, in [Trump’s] judgment, been operating in a manner consistent with the objectives of [his] administration.”
The email also said that several of Wilcox’s decisions were improper because they raised “serious First Amendment concerns” and “vastly exceeded the bounds of the National Labor Relations Act.”
Wilcox sued in federal district court in Washington and won a summary judgment on March 6 that said her removal was “unlawful” and that she “remains a member” of the NLRB who can be removed by the president only on grounds provided in the statute governing the board.
The court rejected the administration’s argument that the tenure protection provided by the statute violates Article II of the Constitution, which spells out the president’s powers.
The district court held that it was bound by Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), a ruling in which the Supreme Court determined that President Franklin Roosevelt acted unlawfully when he terminated the head of the Federal Trade Commission, a so-called independent executive agency, without cause.
The executive branch is not “strictly unitary” and the president’s power to remove officials “has never been viewed as unrestricted,” the district court held.
Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) was appointed by Biden in 2022 after Senate confirmation. In 2024, Biden elevated her to the chairmanship of the board.
She was fired by Trump on Feb. 10. The White House notified her by email that her position was “terminated, effective immediately.”
Harris sued, and on Feb. 18, the federal district court issued a temporary restraining order restoring her employment at the board.
A motions panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit then temporarily stayed the lower court rulings pending appeal. Days later, a divided full circuit lifted the stay issued by the panel, according to the application.
In the application, the government had argued that Article II gives the president authority “to remove, at will, members of multimember boards that wield substantial executive power, such as the NLRB and MSPB.”
Supreme Court precedents “also establish that district courts lack the power to issue injunctions or declaratory judgments countermanding the President’s removal of executive officers,” the application stated.
