'Upended Supreme Court precedent': Appeals court judge slams colleagues' pro-Trump ruling
A Washington, D.C. federal appeals court has cleared the way for President Donald Trump to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board, Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney said on social media Friday.
The NLRB's primary role is to enforce U.S. labor laws related to union activities, collective bargaining, and employee rights in the private sector.
The MSPB, meanwhile, protects federal employees and upholds merit system principles.
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Board members get a five-year term on the board and must be approved by the U.S. Senate.
Trump fired all Democratic-appointed members of the boards, and for now, an appeals court has approved the decision.
In a 2-1 decision, the court ruled that Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board can be fired.
Judge Patricia Millett, the lone dissent, wrote that "her colleagues upend Supreme Court precedent and effectively disable the two boards from functioning while the case proceeds," Cheney said.
"What is more, the stay order strips the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board of the quora that the district courts' injunctions preserved, disabling agencies that Congress created and funded from acting for as long as the President wants them out of commission," wrote Millett.
"That decision will leave languishing hundreds of unresolved legal claims that the Political Branches jointly and deliberately channeled to these expert adjudicatory entities. In addition, the majority decisions' rationale openly calls into question the constitutionality of dozens of federal statutes conditioning the removal of officials on multimember decision-making bodies — everything from the Federal Reserve Board and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the National Transportation Safety Board and the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims," she added.
The case now heads to oral arguments in the D.C. Circuit in mid-May.