Supreme Court says Trump doesn’t have to rehire independent labor board members for now

(CNN) — Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday allowed President Donald Trump to temporarily remove two board members at independent labor agencies while the justices consider whether the president may permanently fire them.

The brief order does not necessarily indicate which way the court is leaning in the case. Instead, the procedural move will give the justices a few days to consider written arguments before deciding whether or not to grant Trump’s request.

The emergency case follows a decision from an appeals court in Washington that temporarily reinstated Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board, and Cathy Harris, chairwoman of the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Roberts ordered the board members to respond to Trump’s emergency appeal on April 15.

Though the dispute is technical and involves agencies most Americans are not familiar with, it could have profound implications for Trump’s efforts to consolidate power within the executive branch – particularly if the conservative court takes Trump up on his request to hear arguments in the case later this year.

“The president should not be forced to delegate his executive power to agency heads who are demonstrably at odds with the administration’s policy objectives for a single day – much less for the months that it would likely take for the courts to resolve this litigation,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the Trump administration’s top appellate lawyer, told the Supreme Court in a filing earlier Wednesday.

The underlying lawsuit raises fundamental questions about the president’s authority to remove officials within the executive branch that Congress said could only be dismissed for cause – such as inefficiency or malfeasance – not because the president disagrees with their decisions. The conservative Supreme Court in recent years has moved toward expanding the president’s power to control independent agencies.

“This case raises a constitutional question of profound importance: whether the president can supervise and control agency heads who exercise vast executive power on the president’s behalf, or whether Congress may insulate those agency heads from presidential control by preventing the President from removing them at will,” Sauer wrote.

A three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals initially ruled for the Trump administration, but the full appeals court voted 7-4 on Monday to wipe out that decision, reinstating the board members.

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly told the courts of appeals to follow extant Supreme Court precedent unless and until that Court itself changes it or overturns it,” the DC Circuit majority wrote in its ruling Monday.

The Supreme Court in 1935 ruled that Congress may require presidents to show cause – such as malfeasance – before dismissing board members overseeing independent agencies. But in recent years, the high court’s conservatives have slowly chipped away at the independence of those agencies, giving the president more power to control all agencies that fall within the executive branch.

The DC Circuit’s decision reinstating two officials meant a quorum was restored at the NLRB and MSPB, allowing the agencies to function at full strength and process cases involving federal employment disputes. The agencies are a critical bulwark against Trump’s efforts to rapidly reduce the size of the federal workforce and fire thousands of employees.

All seven of the DC Circuit judges who supported reinstating the labor officials were appointed by Democratic presidents, and the four dissenting judges were appointed by Republicans.

The federal appeals court in Washington, DC, initially ruled that Trump could remove Wilcox and Harris.

“The Supreme Court has said that Congress cannot restrict the president’s removal authority over agencies that ‘wield substantial executive power,’” wrote US Circuit Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee.

This story has been updated following Roberts’ ruling.

CNN’s Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.

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