SCOTUS says Trump can fire product safety commissioners

The Supreme Court granted an emergency petition on Wednesday, allowing the Trump administration to fire three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The administration asked the high court to intervene after a federal judge in Maryland issued a June injunction reinstating Biden-appointees Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka Jr. The Consumer Product Safety Commission consists of five members who function together as an independent regulatory agency established by Congress in the early 1970s.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh penned the majority opinion attached to the unsigned order and noted that the high court’s temporary orders do not address a case’s merit. He cited a previous judgment from the nine-justice panel that the risk of keeping a previously removed employee in power outweighed the risk of erroneously removing an employee. Justice Elena Kagan penned a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

What was the dissent? The court is once again using an emergency docket to destroy the independence of a congressionally-established agency, Kagan wrote. This court effectively nullified the congressional choice of agency bipartisanship by allowing the president to remove commissioners on the basis of political party, the dissent continued.

Dig deeper: Read Travis K. Kircher’s report on a similar SCOTUS ruling allowing the Trump administration to continue layoffs within the Department of Education.