Another high-stakes court battle centered on Trump’s ability to remove or otherwise control the members of independent agencies was set to take place on Friday when a federal judge in Maryland ruled that President Donald Trump lacked the authority to fire three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and ordered their reinstatement.
Federal District Judge Matthew Maddox, who was appointed by Biden, ruled that the three board members who were fired—Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka Jr.—were rightfully fired and ordered their reinstatement to their positions.
Maddox ruled that the five-member staggered-term CPSC board’s tenured design and protection did “not interfere with” the executive branch powers of Trump under Article II of the U.S. Constitution.
This ruling is a setback for Trump’s short-term agenda, coming just after the Supreme Court last month upheld, for the time being, Trump’s decision to remove two Democratic appointments from the NLRB and the MSPB.
A federal court in Washington, DC, had already dismissed the two board members’ dismissals as “unlawful” in their own individual cases. In May, the Trump administration’s legal team sided with the Supreme Court’s decision to temporarily permit the termination of both board members, voting 6-3 to do so. The justices had previously urged the court to retain both members on the job while the issue progressed through lower courts.
Maddox aimed to differentiate those instances from the CPSC board terminations in his ruling, stating that the Trump administration had failed to prove, as is legally mandated, that any of the other commissioners on the CPSC who were confirmed by the Senate had been negligent or committed misconduct.
“For the reasons set forth below, the Court finds no constitutional defect in the statutory restriction on Plaintiffs’ removal and that Plaintiffs’ purported removal from office was unlawful,” the judge wrote in the decision.
“The Court shall enter an Order granting Plaintiffs’ motion, denying Defendants’ motion, and providing declaratory and injunctive relief permitting Plaintiffs to resume their duties as CPSC Commissioners.”
This is only the most recent in a series of lawsuits challenging Trump’s authority to remove board members from their positions of independence. Similar to the NLRB and MSPB decisions, it revolves around the Supreme Court’s unanimous finding in Humphrey’s Executor, which was handed down ninety years ago, stating that presidents cannot dismiss independent board members without good reason.
According to Maddox, the reason for issuing more permanent injunctive relief is the uncertainty caused by the preliminary posture of the NLRB and MSPB proceedings. In these instances, the plaintiffs were removed and then restored many times.
“Disruption might have resulted in the instant case if Plaintiffs had been reinstated while this case was in its preliminary posture, only to have the Court later deny relief in its final judgment and subject Plaintiffs to removal again,” he concluded. “The risk of such disruption is no longer a factor now that the Court is granting permanent injunctive relief as a final judgment.”
