Prof. Ilan Wurman Quoted by Bloomberg Law About How Supreme Court Ruling Could Enhance President’s Ability to Remove Agency Board Members

Professor Ilan Wurman, Julius E. Davis Professor of Law, was quoted by Bloomberg Law about how the Supreme Court could further enhance the president’s power to remove agency board members including those at the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority. Legal scholars say the strongest indicators of the high court’s receptiveness to Trump’s assertions of authority reside in a three decisions that weakening agency leadership’s job protections, as well as its 2024 decision stemming from one of Trump’s federal indictments that embraced a broad view of presidential immunity. In one decision, Seila Law LLC v. CFPB in 2020, the Supreme Court said Congress can only protect agency board members from at-will terminations if those officials perform quasi-judicial or quasi-legislative functions — and don’t exercise executive power. The Trump administration has put Seila Law at the center of its legal defense to the firings at the NLRB, MSPB, and FLRA with at least two justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch writing in a concurring opinion that the court didn’t go far enough. But Prof. Wurman said that Justice Elena Kagan’s Seila Law dissent suggests for-cause job protections could survive if the court views presidents’ power to remove as stemming from their constitutional duty to ensure laws are faithfully executed.