President Trump’s power to fire got a boost Friday when a federal appeals court hit pause on two lower court rulings that had blocked him from ousting Democratic appointees from agency boards.
The 2-1 decision applies to Gwynne A. Wilcox, whom Mr. Trump has fired from the National Labor Relations Board, and Cathy Harris, booted from the Merit Systems Protection Board, a panel that handles adverse federal employee actions.
Both firings had been blocked by Obama-appointed judges who ruled the president likely overstepped his powers, saying the law only allows members of those boards to be fired for cause. They had ordered the two restored to their positions.
Friday’s ruling is a stay on those lower court decisions, allowing the firings to take effect while the case is developed more fully in the lower courts.
Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, said for-cause firing laws are likely unconstitutional.
“The people elected the president to enforce the nation’s laws, and a stay serves that purpose by allowing the people’s chosen officer to control the executive branch,” Judge Walker wrote.
He was joined by Judge Karen L. Henderson, an appointee of George H.W. Bush.
Dissenting was Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee who said her colleagues were ignoring Supreme Court precedent and breaking new ground in presidential powers.
“I cannot join a decision that uses a hurried and preliminary first-look ruling by this court to announce a revolution in the law that the Supreme Court has expressly avoided, and to trap in legal limbo millions of employees and employers whom the law says must go to these boards for the resolution of their employment disputes,” she wrote.
Judge Millett said the stay also means that the NLRB and MSPB no longer have quorums to operate.
Mr. Trump has made firings a major part of his attempt to remake the federal bureaucracy.
He has argued that a president must have the power to oust people who aren’t in line with his priorities.
Opponents say that’s true for some federal departments, agencies and commissions but not for so-called “independent agencies” with partisan balancing requirements and for-cause removal provisions.
In those cases, the law says the president must cite malfeasance or some other valid reason for removing an official. Policy differences aren’t enough.
Mr. Trump has said those laws are an infringement on his presidential powers.
