Trump administration urges the court to pause a ruling preventing it from firing Consumer Product Safety Commission members

Updated on July 2 at 5:25 pm

Although the Supreme Court officially began its summer recess last week, there are already signs that the next few months may not be particularly restful for the justices (or SCOTUSblog). On Wednesday morning, the Trump administration asked the court to temporarily pause a ruling by a federal judge in Maryland that ordered the reinstatement of three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission whom President Donald Trump fired in May.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer pointed to the Supreme Court’s May 22 ruling in another emergency appeal allowing the president to remove members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board while their challenges to their firings continue. That ruling, Sauer argued, “squarely controls this case.” But instead, Sauer wrote, U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox “chose a different path—one that has sown chaos and dysfunction at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and that warrants this Court’s immediate intervention.” The court requested a response to the application by 4 pm on July 11.

The dispute stems from the Trump administration’s firing in early May of three of the CPSC’s five commissioners – Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka – appointed by then-President Joe Biden. Under the laws creating the CPSC, no more than three commissioners “may be affiliated with the same political party,” and a commissioner can only be removed by the president “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

Boyle, Hoehn-Saric, and Trumka went to federal court in Maryland, where the CPSC is located, arguing that their firing, made without good cause, violated the law. Maddox agreed. He pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1935 decision in Humphrey’s Executor, in which the justices ruled that, although a president can typically fire subordinates for any reason, Congress can create independent, multi-member regulatory agencies whose commissioners can only be removed for cause. “Humphrey’s Executor,” Maddox wrote, “remains good law and is binding on” district judges – and, he concluded, it applies to the CPSC. Maddox ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the three commissioners.

The government asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to put Maddox’s order on hold, but it declined to do so on July 1.

The Trump administration then came to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, asking the justices to pause Maddox’s order while it appeals to the 4th Circuit and, if necessary, the Supreme Court. Sauer also asked the justices to issue an administrative stay – that is, to put Maddox’s order on hold while the court considers the government’s request.

Sauer emphasized that when the Supreme Court granted the government’s request to temporarily block rulings requiring the reinstatement of the NLRB and MSPB commissioners, it had cited “the government’s likelihood of success on the merits” and “the disruptive effect of the repeated removal and reinstatement of officers during the pendency of this litigation.” Those same two factors, Sauer contended, are at issue in this case, and the Supreme Court’s ruling on the earlier emergency appeal should have at the very least led to a stay of Maddox’s order.

“If anything,” Sauer added, “this is an even stronger case for a stay. President Trump decided to remove three Commissioners who would otherwise make up a majority of the CPSC, and whose actions since their putative reinstatement only underscore their hostility to the President’s agenda. The district court’s order effectively transfers control of the CPSC from President Trump to three Commissioners who had been appointed by President Biden—even though President Trump now holds ‘the mandate of the people to exercise [the] executive power. That plain-as-day affront to the President’s fundamental Article II powers warrants intervention now just as much as in” the case involving the NLRB and MSPB commissioners.