Supreme Court grants Trump broad powers to fire agency leaders

[Truth Detector]

I want to correct this misleading headline. The Supreme Court doesn't "grant" anything to anyone. It interprets the Constitution, and as in this case, realizes that Trump has the authority to run the Executive branch as he sees fit and for what he was elected to do. Not a bunch of activist jurists exceeding what little authority they have.

Supreme Court grants Recognizes that Trump has broad powers to fire agency leaders​

The Supreme Court gave the OK on Thursday to President Trump to carry out firings of Democratic appointees at some major federal watchdog agencies, saying the chief executive has wide-ranging powers to shape the workforce that carries out his policies.

The justices said laws that restrict the president’s firing power are likely unconstitutional, though they said they have not reached a final decision on that.

Thursday’s ruling is instead a blockade on lower courts that had stopped the president’s firings at the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board. The ruling allows the president to keep the officials out of their posts while the cases develop more in lower courts.

“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the president … he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents,” the court said in an unsigned opinion.

The decision is a watershed moment in presidential power, suggesting the executive’s power to hire and fire is broader than previously recognized.

The court’s three Democratic appointees dissented, saying the majority was in effect overturning a 90-year-old precedent that had ruled some so-called independent agencies can be shielded from presidential firing.

They said that was all the more egregious, given that the case came to the court on its emergency docket and hasn’t fully developed.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/may/22/supreme-court-grants-trump-broad-powers-fire-agency-leaders/

 

[Truth Detector]

The court, in Thursday’s majority opinion, said for-cause laws can’t always survive constitutional scrutiny. The justices said it must be a case-by-case evaluation, with the key test being whether the power wielded by the agency and the officers is largely executive in nature.

“The stay reflects our judgment that the government is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power,” the justices said.

They said at this point, the president would suffer more for having to keep adversarial employees than those employees would suffer from the firings.

The majority made a point, in the opinion, of saying that the Federal Reserve, another independent multimember board, would not be affected by this new precedent.

Justice Kagan said that declaration came “out of the blue,” and was good to hear — but also puzzling, because the Federal Reserve is similar to the NLRB, MSPB and other agencies where the president has carried out firings, such as the Federal Trade Commission.