On Thursday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court handed the Trump administration another victory. In an unsigned order, the Court granted the application to stay a ruling from the administration to pause a lower court's ruling about whether members from independent federal agencies can be fired. The order notes that this does not apply to firing members from the Federal Reserve, however.
"Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, see Art. II, §1, cl. 1, he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents," a key part of the Court's order read early on.
"Finally, respondents Gwynne Wilcox and Cathy Harris contend that arguments in this case necessarily implicate the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections for members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors or other members of the Federal Open Market Committee... We disagree. The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States," the order also mentioned about the arguments of those fired members, Wlcox and Harris, of the National Labor Relations Board, and Cathy Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board," respectively.
As NBC News reported:
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday granted a Trump administration request that allows the president to fire members of independent federal agencies while suggesting that its legal reasoning would not apply to the Federal Reserve.
The move to pause a lower court ruling formalizes a temporary decision along similar lines on April 9 that allowed President Donald Trump to fire Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board, and Cathy Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board.
"The stay reflects our judgment that the government is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power," the court said in an unsigned order.
The government, it added, "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."
The high court’s three liberal justices dissented.
In a notable passage, the court sought to distinguish the case from any attempt by Trump to fire members of the Federal Reserve, including its chairman, Jerome Powell. The court noted that the Federal Reserve is a "uniquely structured, quasi-private entity" that has its own distinct historical tradition.
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The three liberal justices dissented. That Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined their fellow conservatives justices this time, rather than voting against the Trump administration, as they have done at points during his second term, is also noteworthy.
Mike Davis, of the Article 3 Project, highlighted the portion above about executive power in a post shared to X about the ruling. His posted noted how this is a "Major Supreme Court win for President Trump and the American people... And a major loss for our unelected DC elitist rulers who think they are smarter and better than the American electorate, as evidenced by the first page of Justice Kagan’s dissent," adding that "President Trump is restoring our constitutional republic we lost 90 years ago."
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— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) May 22, 2025
Major Supreme Court win for President Trump and the American people.
“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, see Art. II, §1, cl. 1, he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow… pic.twitter.com/aNmlp2ur0P
"It thought that in certain spheres of government, a group of knowledgeable people from both parties—none of whom a President could remove without cause—would make decisions likely to advance the long-term public good. And that congressional judgment, Humphrey’s makes clear, creates no conflict with the Constitution. Rejecting a claim that the removal restriction enacted for the FTC interferes with 'the executive power,' the Humphrey’s Court held that Congress has authority, in creating such 'quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial' bodies, to 'forbid their [members’] removal except for cause,'" Justice Elan Kagan's dissent read in part.
Earlier this week, the Court ruled 8-1, with only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting, in favor of the Trump administration when it comes to revoking legal status for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. They had been part of the Biden-Harris administration's CHNV program.
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