Supreme Court permits firings at consumer product safety agency

Michael Macagnone, CQ-Roll Call on Jul 23, 2025

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The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to remove members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission on Wednesday, the latest ruling from the court’s conservative bloc temporarily blessing Trump’s firing of independent agency officials.

Wednesday’s brief, unsigned order would allow the administration to re-fire three members of the commission appointed by President Joe Biden — Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr. — while legal challenges to their original firings proceed.

The trio had won a court order in June finding that their firings violated a federal law protecting them from removal except for cause, and Wednesday’s order served as the latest court defeat for Congress’ power to restrict presidents from firing executive branch officials.

The decision followed one in May allowing the Trump administration to fire Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board while their challenges work their way through the court system.

The majority decision Wednesday cited that case, where the justices said there was a “greater risk of harm” to the executive branch from having to deal with an official the president would prefer to fire than the harm done to an official who was wrongfully fired.

“The same is true on the facts presented here, where the Consumer Product Safety Commission exercises executive power in a similar manner as the National Labor Relations Board, and the case does not otherwise differ from Wilcox in any pertinent respect,” Wednesday’s order said.

In the background of the emergency cases is a nearly century-old Supreme Court case known as Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which upheld for-cause removal protections for members of independent agency boards like the Federal Trade Commission. That case has cropped up repeatedly in court cases brought by recently fired federal officials challenging their removal by the Trump administration.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote separately that he thought the court should take up the issue now rather than allow more lower court rulings on Trump’s other firings. When there’s a “fair prospect” of the Supreme Court overturning one of its own precedents, likely Humphrey’s, he said the court should take up the issue.

“Moreover, when the question is whether to narrow or overrule one of this Court’s precedents rather than how to resolve an open or disputed question of federal law, further percolation in the lower courts is not particularly useful because lower courts cannot alter or overrule this Court’s precedents,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Kavanaugh wrote that he agreed with the decision to pause the lower court rulings in favor of the fired officials but would have had the justices take up the issue now. It requires four justices to agree to hear a case, and Kavanaugh was not joined in his opinion by any of the other justices.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the decision and criticized the majority for using an emergency decision to “destroy the independence of an independent agency, as established by Congress.”

Kagan criticized the majority for several decisions that have allowed the Trump administration to ignore existing statutes, including one last week that allowed mass layoffs at the Department of Education despite arguments that such actions would violate federal law.

“By means of such actions, this Court may facilitate the permanent transfer of authority, piece by piece by piece, from one branch of Government to another,” Kagan wrote.

Kagan said the majority had “all but overturned” Humphrey’s and ignored Congress’ intent of creating an independent agency.

Created by statute in 1972, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is led by a five-member commission with staggered seven-year terms, and appointments are subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.

The case is Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, et al., v. Mary Boyle, et al.

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