US President Donald Trump makes an announcement from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on December 3, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-reynolds | Afp | Getty Images
President Donald Trump may remove members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board at will, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
The 2-1 decision from a panel of judges in Washington, D.C., reverses lower-court rulings blocking Trump’s attempts to fire members of the key labor and employment panels.
“Congress may not restrict the President’s ability to remove principal officers who wield substantial executive power,” the two-judge majority wrote, citing a 2020 case known as Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
They determined that another key court precedent, which was cited in the prior rulings that favored the fired board members, did not apply to the NLRB and MSPB.
Those boards “wield substantial powers that are both executive in nature and different from the powers” that are covered by the removal protections laid out in the 1935 case known as Humphrey’s Executor, the majority wrote.
“So, Congress cannot restrict the President’s ability to remove NLRB or MSPB members,” ruled Judges Gregory Katsas and Justin Walker, who were both appointed to the D.C. circuit by Trump.
The Trump administration is challenging the 90-year-old precedent set by Humphrey’s, which limits the president’s ability to unilaterally remove the heads of certain independent government agencies. The Supreme Court on Monday is set to hear oral arguments in a case that could determine whether Humphrey’s is overturned.
The third judge on the appellate panel, Florence Pan, warned in a strongly worded dissent that Friday’s ruling significantly increases the president’s power.
“Today, my colleagues make us the first court to strike down the independence of a traditional multimember expert agency,” Pan, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, wrote.
“Under my colleagues’ reasoning, it appears that no independent agencies may lawfully exist in this country,” she wrote. “Their determination that the MSPB cannot be independent … suggests that no agencies can be independent.”
Pan added that her colleagues “redefine the type of executive power that must be placed under the exclusive command of the President, and effectively grant him dominion over approximately thirty-three previously independent agencies.”
Katsas and Walker noted that their opinion does “not address whether Congress may restrict the President’s ability to remove members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.”
They pointed to a Supreme Court ruling from May, which, while allowing Trump to temporarily fire two NLRB and MSPB members, identified “a ‘distinct historical tradition’ regarding the treatment of congressionally chartered banks, which may bear on Congress’s ability to restrict the removal of their officials.”
Trump has tried to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook, a Biden nominee, while urging the central bank and its chairman, Jerome Powell, to quickly slash U.S. interest rates.
Cook sued to block her removal; the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in the case on Jan. 21.
Friday’s ruling also does not touch on whether Congress can restrict the president’s ability to fire members from certain agencies that have “solely adjudicatory functions,” Katsas and Walker noted.
They cited the “War Claims Commission,” a temporary agency established after World War II to adjudicate compensation claims from American prisoners of war, as an example.
Katsas and Walker additionally did not weigh in on “whether wrongfully removed principal officers may obtain declaratory, equitable, or mandatory relief against the President or other government officials,” they wrote.