The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is led by five presidentially appointed board members who may be removed from office only for neglect of duty or malfeasance. In 2025, the Trump Administration attempted to fire Member Gwynne Wilcox from the Board without cause, in defiance of the National Labor Relations Act. President Trump is the first President to attempt to remove an NLRB Member. He asserted that the NLRB’s leadership structure is unconstitutional because it allows the president to remove the agency’s board members only for good cause, not at will. In February 2025, CAC filed an amicus brief in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in support of Wilcox. 

President Trump argues that under the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, the NLRB’s board members must be removable at will by the president because they exercise substantial executive power. Our brief showed why this is wrong. 

We first demonstrated that Seila Law did not call into question the legitimacy of agencies structured like the NLRB, sometimes referred to as multimember independent agencies. As we explain, Seila Law addressed only the relatively new phenomenon of agencies led by a single director who is not removable at will. Based on three unique features of these single-director independent agencies, the Court concluded that they represent a novel intrusion on presidential authority that clashes with constitutional structure. The Court was clear, however, that it was not overruling its precedent upholding similar removal limits for the leaders of “a traditional independent agency, run by a multimember board.” None of the reasons the Supreme Court gave for striking down the leadership structure of the CFPB in Seila Law apply to the NLRB—a prototypical multimember agency that resembles agencies dating back 150 years in every constitutionally significant way. 

Our brief next explained why long-established practice has placed the validity of multimember independent agencies like the NLRB beyond doubt. In separation-of-powers cases, courts place significant weight upon historical practice because it embodies the compromises and working arrangements that the elected branches of government themselves have reached. Congress has been assigning regulatory authority to multimember independent agencies for most of the nation’s history, beginning nearly 150 years ago. Supreme Court decisions, including Seila Law, have consistently confirmed the validity of these traditional agencies. The NLRB, which is nearly a century old, cannot be distinguished from the host of other multimember independent agencies that have long populated the executive branch. 

Finally, the text and history of the Constitutional further underscore the legitimacy of multimember independent agencies. Apart from Congress’s power to impeach, the Constitution is silent with respect to the power of removal. Instead, it broadly empowers Congress to shape the federal government in the course of creating its “Departments” and “Officers.” There is no historical basis for the claim that Congress lacks any authority to modify or temper the president’s ability to remove federal officers. Constitutional text and history do not support President Trump’s assertion that good-cause tenure for NLRB Members violates his Article II authority. 

In short, our brief argued that the NLRB’s leadership structure is consistent with Supreme Court precedent and established practice, and Wilcox’s firing without good cause was unlawful. 

In March 2025, the district court ruled in favor of Wilcox, upholding the constitutionality of the NLRB’s leadership structure and enjoining officials from preventing Wilcox from performing her duties. Writing for the court, Judge Beryl A. Howell explained that both historical practice and case law “make clear that textual silence regarding removal does not confer absolute authority on a President.” The court recognized the longstanding tradition of independent, multimember agencies and concluded that the constitutionality of removal protections first recognized in Humphrey’s Executor remains binding on the court.  Thus, the court concluded that President Trump’s attempt to fire Wilcox “was a blatant violation of the law.”  

Appellants filed an emergency motion in the D.C. Circuit seeking a stay pending appeal of the district court’s decision, and on March 11, 2025, CAC filed an amicus brief in opposition to that motion.