WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ruled Thursday that President Donald Trump acted illegally when he fired a member of an independent labor agency, and the judge ordered that she be allowed to remain on the job.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., found Trump did not have the authority to remove Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board.
“An American president is not a king — not even an ‘elected’ one — and his power to remove federal officers and honest civil servants like plaintiff is not absolute,” Howell wrote.
She acknowledged the administration’s argument that the Supreme Court may be inclined to overturn a 90-year-old decision restricting the president’s power to remove members of independent agencies. But the judge said that until and unless the high court acts, current law clearly supports keeping Wilcox in her role.
The Trump administration quickly appealed her ruling,
Wilcox sued Trump after he fired her and the agency’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, on Jan. 27.
Wilcox's attorneys said no president previously had tried to remove an NLRB member. They argued that board members can only be fired “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office” and only after giving notice and holding a hearing.
Trump's "only path to victory" in Wilcox's case would be to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to "adopt a new, more aggressive vision of presidential power that would effectively abolish independent agencies" in the U.S., her lawyers wrote.
During a hearing Wednesday, Howell jokingly referred to herself as a “speed bump” for the case on its way to the Supreme Court.
Government attorneys argued that NLRB members should be “removable at will to ensure democratic accountability.” Reinstating Wilcox to the board would be “an extraordinary intrusion on the executive branch,” they added.
"The President cannot be compelled to retain the services of a principal officer whom the President no longer believes should be entrusted with the exercise of executive power," Justice Department lawyers wrote.
Wilcox was the first Black woman to serve on the five-member board in its 90-year history. The Senate confirmed Wilcox for a second five-year term in September 2023.
Congress created the board in 1935. Its primary purpose is to resolve disputes over unfair labor practices. It adjudicated hundreds of cases in the last fiscal year.
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Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this story.