The Supreme Court just signed off on President Trump’s firing of a member of the National Labor Relations Board despite laws against at-will dismissals, further cementing his power over independent agencies.
On Monday, the high court decided not to review a ruling from the lower U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia allowing the firing of Gwynne Wilcox, who Trump decided to axe just after his inauguration last year. Wilcox was the first Black woman member of the NLRB, and had been appointed to a second five-year term on the board by President Biden in 2023.
The Supreme Court’s decision is in line with its earlier ruling in June allowing Trump to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter. The D.C. circuit decision in Wilcox’s case came before the Supreme Court’s decision in Slaughter’s case.
The NLRB and the FTC, along with other federal regulatory bodies, are supposed to be independent from the president’s control, with bipartisan boards. But in his second term as president, Trump has ignored rules protecting agency members from being fired without cause, pushing out members simply because they were appointed by Democrats.
While the Supreme Court has enabled Trump in the cases of Slaughter and now Wilcox, it has drawn the line with Lisa Cook, a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, and prevented the president from firing her. That hasn’t stopped Trump from attempting to smear Cook with a cooked-up investigation over alleged mortgage fraud. Cook has not been charged with any crimes, but Trump isn’t interested in sniffing out wrongdoing: He wants to assert total control over regulatory agencies.