A federal appeals court sided on Friday with President Trump’s drive to bring agencies with some independence more directly under his control, ruling that the president was within his rights to fire the heads of two administrative boards that review employment actions and labor disputes.
The decision cripples one of the bodies that might stand in Mr. Trump’s way as he slashes and reshapes the government, an agency known as the Merit Systems Protection Board that reviews federal employment disputes, just as it is deluged with cases from the firings of thousands of federal workers.
It also effectively paralyzes the other body, the National Labor Relations Board, in another blow to unions the day after Mr. Trump moved to end collective bargaining agreements for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
More broadly, the decision was an endorsement of Mr. Trump’s expansive view of executive powers in a case that many legal observers believe is headed for the Supreme Court. A final ruling there could put agencies across the government that Congress intended to be separate from the White House under the president’s control.
By a 2-to-1 vote, the ruling on Friday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed two district court decisions that had reinstated Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne A. Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board while their cases play out. Mr. Trump fired Ms. Wilcox in January and Ms. Harris in February. Both women argued that they had been improperly terminated.
“The government contends that the president suffers irreversible harm each day the district courts’ injunctions remain in effect because he is deprived of the constitutional authority vested in him alone. I agree,” Judge Justin Walker wrote in the opinion. Judge Walker was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020. Judge Karen L. Henderson, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, also sided with the government.
Late Friday, Ms. Harris filed a motion asking the panel to hold off on removing her from her position until the full appellate court in the District of Columbia can consider the appeal.
Removing Ms. Wilcox and Ms. Harris from their positions will debilitate each board. The labor board requires a minimum of three members to act. Without Ms. Wilcox, there are just two. The merit protections board requires two members to act, and without Ms. Harris, there will be only one member left.
“The decision will give the administration more running room in its campaign to weaken labor regulation and to remake the civil service,” said Donald F. Kettl, an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland who studies the civil service. “That will allow it to move even more quickly to make progress on its goals.”
Earlier this month, Ms. Harris ordered the reinstatement of thousands of probationary employees who were fired in February as part of Mr. Trump’s grand plan to shrink the size of the federal government.
Mr. Trump also fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, the government’s independent watchdog agency. The head of that office, Hampton Dellinger, was investigating the probationary firings.
As with Ms. Wilcox and Ms. Harris, a district judge ordered that Mr. Dellinger be reinstated while his challenge to his termination proceeds. And the same panel of appellate judges in the District of Columbia Circuit reversed the lower court’s decision. Mr. Dellinger dropped his challenge to the firing after the appeals court decision.
The head of the Office of Special Counsel and members of the labor and merit protections boards are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Patricia A. Millett, an Obama appointee, said that the prevailing opinions are in direct conflict with at least two other circuit courts.
The decision, she wrote, “also marks the first time in history that a court of appeals, or the Supreme Court, has licensed the termination of members of multimember adjudicatory boards statutorily protected by the very type of removal restriction the Supreme Court has twice unanimously upheld.”
She described the other judges’ decisions as a “hurried and preliminary first-look” that traps “in legal limbo millions of employees and employers whom the law says must go to these boards for the resolution of their employment disputes.”
In termination letters, the Trump administration told fired probationary employees that they may have limited grounds to take their appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Government lawyers have also argued that fired employees and labor unions that represent the fired workers do not have standing to bring a case to a district court because Congress designed the merit protections board and similar bodies to handle those matters.
Judge William H. Alsup in the Northern District of California recently questioned how the administration could do that after the “cannibalization” of the Office of Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Judge Alsup is presiding over a case brought by several labor unions challenging the firing of thousands of probationary employees.
If the merit protections board does not have enough members to make decisions, “these employees will have no recourse,” Judge Alsup said during a March 13 hearing.
Rebecca Davis O’Brien contributed reporting.
