The Supreme Court on Thursday let President Trump temporarily remove the leaders of two independent agencies, setting up a challenge to the legal principle that limits a president’s power to fire such officials.
The order did not give a vote count, which is typical in such emergency applications, but it did provide a two-page summary of the court’s reasoning. Justice Elena Kagan issued a written dissent, joined by the court’s other two liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The majority wrote that Mr. Trump could remove executive officials who exercise power on his behalf “because the Constitution vests the executive power in the president.” They wrote that this authority was subject to only “narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents.”
Federal laws meant to insulate officials who run independent agencies from politics require the president to give a good reason for firing them. Mr. Trump says that those limits are an unconstitutional check on the president’s power to control the executive branch and that he must be allowed to remove officials for any reason or no reason.
The court’s ruling tees up a possible challenge to the independence of many agencies long thought to be protected by Congress. However, the majority appeared to make an exception for the Federal Reserve Board. In its order, the court noted that although the agency leaders involved in the current case had argued that the case would implicate the constitutionality of for-cause removals of members of the Federal Reserve, the justices said they disagreed.
The majority wrote that the Federal Reserve was “a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity” with a “distinct historical tradition.”
The passage was significant because Mr. Trump has lashed out at Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, including saying last month that “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”
Mr. Trump later appeared to walk back the remark, saying that he had “no intention” of firing Mr. Powell.
The cases before the justices started after Mr. Trump, without citing a cause, fired Cathy A. Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, and Gwynne A. Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board. Both had been appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Weakening the power of the two boards is part of Mr. Trump’s campaign to reshape the government and the workplace. The Merit Systems Protection Board reviews federal employment disputes, while the National Labor Relations Board safeguards the rights of private-sector workers.
In both cases, the removals deprived the boards of quorums, making it impossible for them to act.
Lawyers for the officials argued that there was no meaningful difference between their agencies and the Federal Reserve. “At a time when the president is publicly pressuring the Fed Chair on monetary policy,” lawyers for Ms. Wilcox wrote in a Supreme Court brief last month, “experts warn that any signal from this court that the Fed’s independence is in jeopardy will further unsettle jittery markets.”
In a response, lawyers for the administration wrote that the status of the Federal Reserve “presents a distinct question with a unique historical pedigree.”
“That question, the brief added, “is not at issue here.”
In the cases concerning the two officials recently fired by Mr. Trump, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled last month by a 7-to-4 vote that the administration must temporarily reinstate them while their appeals proceed.
In response to an emergency application from the Trump administration, Chief Justice Roberts paused the appeals court’s interim ruling while the full Supreme Court considered the matter.
That emergency application was the latest in a series of requests asking the Supreme Court to step in after federal judges blocked the administration’s initiatives on personnel, spending, immigration and citizenship.
In the cases dealing with the fired officials, the administration also asked the court to grant review and schedule arguments at a special session of the court in May, with a decision to follow by July, to settle the issue with finality even before lower courts have acted.
“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,” wrote D. John Sauer, the solicitor general.
The appeals court ruling, which was unsigned, said that a 1935 Supreme Court precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, barred the firings. If it is to be overruled, the majority said, the Supreme Court must do so.
The 1935 case concerned a federal law that protected commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission, saying they could be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt nonetheless fired a commissioner, William Humphrey. The only reason he gave was that Mr. Humphrey’s actions were not aligned with the administration’s policy goals. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the firing had been unlawful.
The decision is an acknowledged landmark.
“It is hard to imagine a precedent whose overruling could more radically upend existing institutions,” Daniel B. Rice and Jack Boeglin wrote in The Virginia Law Review in 2019.
In 2020, the Supreme Court seemed to lay the groundwork for overruling the precedent in a case involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“In our constitutional system,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “the executive power belongs to the president, and that power generally includes the ability to supervise and remove the agents who wield executive power in his stead.”
But the chief justice drew distinctions between agencies led by a single director, like the consumer bureau, and bodies with multiple members, like the two boards. Several justices said they did not think the differences were meaningful.
Lawyers for the fired officials in the new cases urged the justices to reinstate them for now and to proceed deliberately in confronting the momentous issues presented by their cases.
The two boards have distinctive features and functions, they wrote, and a broad ruling allowing the leaders of all independent agencies to be subject to unfettered presidential control would also imperil entities like the Federal Reserve Board, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Transportation Safety Board.
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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