Supreme Court under pressure to take up fired agency head cases
The article discusses recent legal developments involving the Supreme Court and the firing of Democrat-appointed heads of independant federal agencies. The Trump administration has petitioned the Supreme Court to allow it to fire FTC commissioner rebecca Slaughter, despite lower courts ordering her reinstatement. Chief Justice John Roberts has permitted an administrative stay enabling her removal while the Court considers whether to hear the case before it proceeds through lower courts.
Meanwhile, two other fired agency officials-Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris and National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox-have requested the Supreme Court to consolidate their cases with Slaughter’s if the Court agrees to hear it. Both Harris and Wilcox had earlier had their firings allowed temporarily by the Court but their cases were not taken up for full review.
The cases center on whether the President can remove independent agency heads at will or only for cause, possibly challenging the nearly 90-year-old precedent set by humphrey’s Executor v.United States.Legal teams argue about whether the Supreme Court should wait for these cases to proceed through lower courts or hear them promptly due to their significance. The Justice Department supports immediate Supreme Court review,emphasizing the importance of resolving the issue.
A decision from the Supreme Court on whether to grant or deny stays and whether to hear the cases fully could come soon. This could have major implications for the independence of federal agencies and presidential authority over their leadership.
Supreme Court under pressure to take up fired agency head cases
Two fired Democrat-appointed independent agency heads have now asked the Supreme Court to consider their cases if the justices decide to hear a separate case regarding firing a Democrat-appointed FTC commissioner.
The Trump administration petitioned the high court earlier this month to allow it to fire FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, after lower courts ruled she should be reinstated, marking the third time a challenge of an independent agency head’s firing has made its way to the Supreme Court’s emergency docket in recent months. Chief Justice John Roberts granted an administrative stay allowing Slaughter to be fired while the justices consider whether to issue a firm stay and if they will hear the case before it has made its way through the lower courts.
As the high court weighs whether to hear the case regarding Slaughter’s firing before judgment, fired Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris and fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox have both asked the justices to consider their case for full arguments if they agree to hear Slaughter’s case.
Harris and Wilcox made their requests via letters from their respective lawyers posted to the emergency docket for Slaughter’s case. Both women were part of the first emergency docket case regarding independent agency head firings, which made its way before the justices earlier this year. The Supreme Court allowed the administration to fire Harris and Wilcox in the interim, but opted not to take up the case before it finished going through lower courts.
In the letters, the fired agency heads’ lawyers said both of them filed a “conditional petition for certiorari before judgment,” which asks the justices to review the merits of their cases if the Supreme Court decides to take up the FTC case. Wilcox’s lawyers, in their petition to the Supreme Court, argued there should be no rush in taking up any of the challenges, but if the high court decides to hear full arguments in Slaughter’s case, it should include both Wilcox and Harris’s cases alongside it, too.
“No real-world harm will come from allowing the ordinary appellate process to unfold over a few more weeks. But if the Court is nevertheless inclined to grant review to reconsider Humphrey’s Executor on an accelerated timeline in any case, it should grant review here,” Wilcox’s lawyers wrote.
“If it does so, the Court may also wish to grant certiorari before judgment in this case’s companion, Trump v. Harris, which would allow the cases to be argued in tandem, as they were in the D.C. Circuit,” the filing continued.
Slaughter’s lawyer maintained in a filing on Monday that the high court should not take up the case before it has made its way through the lower courts, while the Justice Department pointed to Wilcox and Harris’s conditional petitions to hear their cases as evidence that the justices should hear the full case now.
“Those petitions confirm that the importance of the issues in these cases warrant the extraordinary step of granting certiorari before judgment,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in filing on Tuesday.
SUPREME COURT ALLOWS TRUMP TO FIRE FTC COMMISSIONER WHILE CONSIDERING CASE
The Justice Department has asked the justices to look at the case, which could overturn the high court’s 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which found that then-President Franklin Roosevelt could not fire an FTC commissioner at his discretion and could only fire him “for cause,” as outlined in the law passed by Congress authorizing the creation of the FTC.
With all the necessary briefs filed on Tuesday, the Supreme Court could make a decision at any time. The high court will elect to either grant or deny a stay, which would either allow or deny Slaughter to remain in her job pending litigation, while also deciding if it wants to take up the case now rather than wait for it to go through lower courts.
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