The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, July 19, 2024.
Kevin Mohatt | Reuters
The Supreme Court on Thursday strongly suggested that Federal Reserve board members would have greater protection against being fired by a president in a ruling that, for now, allows President Donald Trump to fire two members of other federal agencies’ boards.
The Supreme Court in its ruling said, “We disagree” with arguments by Gwynne Wilcox and Cathy Harris that their legal challenges to their terminations “necessarily implicate the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections for members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors or other members of the Federal Open Market Committee.”
“The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,” the majority ruling said.
The three liberal members of the court dissented from the decision by six conservative justices, which keeps the plaintiffs in the case off their boards as their lawsuit challenging their terminations is pending.
While Thursday’s decision does not explicitly bar Trump — or any other president — from firing a Federal Reserve board member, it suggests that any effort by a president to do so would face strong resistance from the Supreme Court as currently constituted.
Trump previously fired Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board.
A federal district court judge in Washington, D.C., had enjoined Trump from removing both women from their respective boards. An appeals court later upheld that order.
But in early April, the Supreme Court stayed those rulings while the case continued, meaning that Trump did not have to reinstate the women to their boards.
That temporary order was formalized in Thursday’s opinion by the high court.
“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President … he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents,” the majority said in the opinion.
“The stay reflects our judgment that the Government is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power,” the opinion said. “But we do not ultimately decide in this posture whether the NLRB or MSPB falls within such a recognized exception; that question is better left for resolution after full briefing and argument.”
The majority also said their stay “reflects our judgment that the Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who has been a target of criticism from Trump, in November said that he would not resign if Trump asked him to do so.
Powell also said that the president does not have the power to fire him.
“Not permitted under the law,” Powell said.
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