Prime Highlights

• Supreme Court allows Trump to replace three Democratic Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) members.
• Ruling settles argument over destabilizing independent federal agencies.

Key Facts

• Emergency order is stripping constitutional restrictions on presidential power to oust CPSC commissioners.
• Liberal justices who oppose, claiming this destabilizes agencies’ independence.

Key Background

Most significantly, the Supreme Court recently made ex-President Trump a winner when, in deciding that he was within his rights in removing three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) for no reason, it declared a significant reversal of presidents’ power over independent federal agencies.

The three commissioners who were removed—Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka Jr.—had protested against the removal on the grounds of protected authority under the Consumer Product Safety Act. They could be removed by law only on the grounds of misconduct or dereliction of duty. Trump used his powers to remove them without assigning reasons. The lower court had before then ruled that the expulsion was unlawful and ordered them to be reinstated because there was a need to maintain the bipartisanship of the agency to enable it to regulate public safety. The 6–3 Supreme Court ruling, in which its conservative majority justices were in the majority, put on hold the lower court’s ruling. The ruling functionally sanctions unbridled expansive interpretation of presidential authority which accords recent judicial leaning towards executive dominance over independent agencies. The Court reflected on previous precedents when agencies comparably situated such as the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board came under presidential removal power.

Liberal justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson vehemently dissented, warning that this decision had the potential to open the floodgates to a protracted slide towards undermining checks and balances. They pointed out that such decisions enable the executive branch to avoid bipartisan scrutiny, something which would necessarily undermine agency stability and public trust.

This ruling is one of an on-going line of judicial decisions deconstructing the Humphrey’s Executor (1935) precedent, an earlier case limiting presidential power to dismiss independent agency members. This ruling also tilts the scales further in favor of the federal government and probes the continued independence of regulatory bodies like the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and others that are charged with autonomy from political influence.

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