Trump urges Supreme Court to end ‘chaos’ caused by trial court judges
The Supreme Court should resolve the “chaos” caused by lower court judges continuing to order reinstatements of fired executive officials, the Trump administration argued in a Wednesday filing.
President Donald Trump asked the justices to immediately let him fire three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and to finally resolve questions surrounding the president’s ability to remove officials without cause by adding the case to their fall docket.
“The ongoing dysfunction at the agency has put career employees in the untenable position of deciding which Commissioners’ directives to follow, has distracted the agency from its mission of protecting consumer safety, and has done serious harm to the President’s policy agenda,” the application explains. “Put simply, the district court’s decision and the court of appeals’ refusal to stay it have left the CPSC at loggerheads with the President and with itself.”
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision on Tuesday preventing the president from removing the three CPSC members.
Two days after the district court ordered the members’ reinstatement, the officials “annulled a host of agency decisions,” the application notes.
The lower court’s decision also challenges the Supreme Court’s authority, the administration argues, noting the justices’ allowed them to move forward with firing officials in a similar case in May.
In Trump v. Wilcox, the Supreme Court granted Trump’s emergency request to dismiss National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) members, finding 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.”
While the Trump v. Wilcox decision “did not definitively resolve the merits,” it is still “binding precedent,” the administration said.
“This Court should step in to stop lower courts from treating Wilcox like the proverbial excursion ticket—good for one day and trip only,” the administration argued.
District court judges also blocked removals of Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) and the United States Institute of Peace officials after the Wilcox decision, though their orders were paused by the D.C. Circuit Court of appeals.
“Those decisions have subjected the President to ongoing intrusions on his exercise of executive power, have exposed agencies to the disruption of repeated removals and reinstatements, and have required federal courts to continue to resolve emergency applications concerning the removal of executive officer,” the administration wrote. “This Court should grant certiorari before judgment now, hear argument in the fall, and put a speedy end to the disruption being caused by uncertainty about the scope of Humphrey’s Executor.“
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