President Donald Trump filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court on July 2, asking the justices to let him fire three Biden appointees at the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The application in Trump v. Boyle, filed by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, was directed to Chief Justice John Roberts.
The legal filing is the president’s latest effort to remove a leader of an independent federal agency that has traditionally been shielded from termination without cause.
The application comes after the Supreme Court, on May 22, formally blocked lower court rulings that prevented Trump from firing members of independent labor boards.
In Trump v. Wilcox, the nation’s highest court temporarily halted orders by two Washington-based federal judges that blocked the president’s terminations of Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board before their terms expired.
But on June 23, a federal district judge “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 application says.
In May, Trump removed three members of the CPSC—respondents Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka Jr., all of whom had been appointed by President Joe Biden.
The district judge relied on a statute that he said insulates CPSC members from removal at will, countermanding Trump’s decision and ordering the respondents reinstated.
Since their reinstatement, the members “moved to undo actions that the Commission had taken since their removal,” the application says.
The district court’s ruling has “relegated Wilcox to a footnote,” according to the application. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied the administration’s stay request on July 1.
“In light of the untenable chaos caused by respondents’ court-ordered takeover of the CPSC, by respondents’ aggressive efforts to wield executive power while stay proceedings remain ongoing, and by one of the reinstated Commissioner’s threats to take action against staff members who do not carry out his directives, this Court’s prompt intervention is needed,” the application says.
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