WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today in Harris v. Bessent and Wilcox v. Trump, cases in which the court is considering whether President Trump’s attempts to fire Merit Systems Protection Board Chair Cathy Harris and National Labor Relations Board Member Gwynne Wilcox were illegal, Constitutional Accountability Center Legal Fellow Margaret Hassel issued the following reaction:

President Trump’s attempts to fire the leaders of agencies that adjudicate labor issues is an attack on not only the independence of those agencies, but also federal and private sector workers and American democracy itself. As Judge Florence Pan identified this morning, under the administration’s legal theory, “virtually any independent agency that currently exists would need to be reconfigured.” That cannot be right, and the Judges correctly pushed back on the government’s sweeping and destructive assertions of presidential power. As counsel for Gwynne Wilcox explained, echoing CAC’s amicus brief in support of Harris and Wilcox, the “settled and unquestioned historical practice between the branches” for more than a century “has recognized Congress’s authority to create independent multimember bodies whose members are protected from at-will removal.” The D.C. Circuit should not upend that established practice now.

CAC Senior Appellate Counsel Smita Ghosh added this reaction:

The government’s lawyer conceded, quoting Justice Antonin Scalia, that its position “involves an acceptance of exclusive power that can theoretically be abused.” And today’s argument made clear that the stakes of this case are far from theoretical. As Judge Florence Pan explained, Congress created independent agencies to make certain decisions free from the whims of day-to-day politics. These are, in her words, “real agencies that affect real people.” And the Judges were aware that their decision could affect the Federal Reserve Board—another independent agency whose leaders can only be fired for cause. Judge Pan and Judge Gregory Katsas repeatedly emphasized that the government’s “default” approach to executive power would allow the President to fire Federal Reserve Board members for any reason. Tellingly, the government struggled to articulate an “exception” to its expansive theory for that agency.