In Reply to: NYT: More Republicans want the release of Epstein files..... posted by bluebellknoll on July 23, 2025 at 14:19:06
Thanks SC!
NYT: Supreme Court Lets Trump Fire Consumer Product Safety Regulators
The court’s order was the latest in a series of emergency rulings on the scope of the president’s power over independent agencies.
By Adam Liptak
Reporting from Washington
July 23, 2025, 4:35 p.m. ET
The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed President Trump to fire the three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a five-member group that monitors the safety of items like toys, cribs and electronics.
The court’s brief order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. The order is not the last word in the case, which is pending in an appeals court and may return to the justices.
In a series of rulings since the start of Mr. Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court has almost without exception given him broad leeway to exercise control over the executive branch, including by firing officials despite a federal law limiting his authority to do so.
The Supreme Court has been chipping away at a 90-year-old precedent that allowed Congress to shield the leaders of independent agencies from politics by making it hard to fire them. In response to an emergency application in late May, the Supreme Court let Mr. Trump remove, for now, the leaders of two other agencies: Cathy A. Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, and Gwynne A. Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board.
The majority wrote that Mr. Trump could remove officials who exercised power on his behalf “because the Constitution vests the executive power in the president.”
As for the product safety board, Mr. Trump notified the three commissioners in early May that he was removing them. Although a federal law allows them to be terminated only for “neglect of duty or malfeasance,” the president gave no reasons for the firings.
He has said that congressional limits on his ability to remove leaders of independent agencies are an unconstitutional check on the president’s power to control the executive branch.
The commissioners — Mary T. Boyle, Richard L. Trumka Jr. and Alexander Hoehn-Saric — said they had been targeted for votes they had cast to stop the import of poorly made lithium-ion batteries and for objecting to staffing cuts.
The three officials were forbidden from entering their offices unescorted and from using the agency’s computer system.
About a month later, Judge Matthew J. Maddox of the Federal District Court in Maryland reinstated them, and they resumed their work.
Judge Maddox, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said the 1935 Supreme Court precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, barred the firings.