Supreme Court hands Trump a win on Consumer Product Safety Commission firings
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump can fire three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission for now the Supreme Court said on July 23 in the latest decision boosting the ability of the president to control independent agencies.
The ruling was made over the objections of the court’s three liberal justices.
“Once again, this Court uses its emergency docket to destroy the independence of an independent agency, as established by Congress,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote. "By means of such actions, this Court may facilitate the permanent transfer of authority, piece by piece by piece, from one branch of Government to another."
The five-member regulatory commission, created by Congress in 1972, aims to keep people from being injured or killed by defective or harmful products.
Commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate in staggered seven-year terms to protect them from political or industry pressure and to protect the agency from abrupt changes in composition. By law, commissioners can be removed only for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
But, in May, Trump fired without cause the three members appointed by President Joe Biden: Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr.
A federal judge in Maryland ordered the commissioners reinstated, saying the threat to public safety from removing them outweighed any hardship the administration might suffer from keeping them on while the firings are being challenged.
In his June ruling, U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox also said the product safety commission is similar in structure and function to another independent agency that was the center of a landmark 1935 ruling − Humphrey’s Executor v. United States − limiting the ability of the president to remove independent agency officials.
“Humphrey’s Executor remains good law and is binding on this Court,” Maddox wrote.
But the Trump administration said Maddox instead should’ve taken his cue from the Supreme Court’s May decision allowing the president to fire Democratic members of two federal labor boards while the former members challenge their dismissals.
A majority of the Supreme Court agreed. In a brief and unsigned opinion, the majority said the situations were similar. There’s greater risk of harm in allowing the commissioners to continue to serve after Trump fired them than the potential harm of preventing a wrongfully removed officer from continuing to serve, the majority said.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said there’s “at least a fair prospect” that the court will overturn the 1935 ruling.
Because of that, Kavanaugh said, he would have preferred for the court to take up that underlying issue now, before it’s worked its way through the lower courts. That would end confusion about whether Humphreys Executor is still good law, he wrote.
In the past week, judges have reinstated members of the National Credit Union Administration and of the Federal Trade Commission who were fired by Trump.
The CPSC is now effectively controlled by Biden’s appointees even though Trump is president, lawyers for the government said in a filing.
Decisions made by the commissioners who are “hostile” to Trump’s agenda have “thrown the agency into chaos and have put agency staff in the untenable position of deciding which Commissioners’ directives to follow,” the Department of Justice said.
Attorneys for the three commissioners appointed by Biden reminded the Supreme Court that the justices twice in the past year declined to review appeals court decisions that upheld restrictions on the president’s ability to remove CPSC members without cause.
And Maddox, the district judge, noted that the term of one of the three Biden appointees expires in October, giving Trump the chance to appoint her successor and to “exert significant influence over the agency.”