The Supreme Court on Thursday granted the Trump administration’s request to pause orders by federal judges that required government officials to allow board members at two independent federal agencies to stay in office after President Donald Trump tried to fire them. Chief Justice John Roberts had already issued an administrative stay, which temporarily put those orders on hold to give the justices time to consider the government’s request, so Thursday’s order extends that hold while the litigation continues in a federal appeals court and, if necessary, the Supreme Court.
In an unsigned two-page order, the court explained that the decision to put the lower courts’ orders on hold “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.”
Justice Elena Kagan dissented from the court’s order, in an eight-page opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Calling the order “nothing short of extraordinary,” Kagan would have turned down the Trump administration’s request.
The dispute stems from Trump’s efforts to remove two federal officials, Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris of the Merits Systems Protection Board, earlier this year. Both women were appointed by then-President Joe Biden for terms that were due to expire in 2028.
Wilcox and Harris went to federal court in Washington, D.C., where they argued that their firings violated federal law because, unlike most federal officials, they can only be removed for good cause.
Two different federal judges ruled for the officials, ordering the Trump administration to allow them to continue to serve. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit blocked those orders, but the full court of appeals reversed that ruling and reinstated the trial judges’ instructions to allow Wilcox and Harris to remain in office.
The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on April 9, asking the justices to put the orders on hold or, in the alternative, take up the dispute and rule on the merits of the cases, without waiting for the court of appeals to weigh in. Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, contended that the dispute implicates an important constitutional question: the president’s ability to supervise the agency heads who exercise power on his behalf.
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Supreme Court allows Trump to remove agency heads without cause for now
