Harris v. Bessent / Wilcox v. Trump

Shortly after taking office, President Trump terminated Cathy Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Although federal statutes protect MSPB and NLRB members against removal without cause, the President offered no reason for removing either Ms. Harris or Ms. Wilcox. Both Ms. Harris and Ms. Wilcox filed lawsuits in federal district court, arguing that their removal was unlawful. The district courts in both cases agreed, and ordered Ms. Harris and Ms. Wilcox reinstated. The government appealed.

Public Citizen filed an amicus brief in support of the district courts’ judgments in the two cases. The brief explained that statutory removal protections for the principal officers of multimember adjudicatory bodies like the MSPB and NLRB are enforceable and that the Supreme Court had rejected the government’s contrary argument nearly a century ago, in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. A divided panel of the D.C. Circuit, however, held that Humphrey’s Executor does not apply to the MSPB and NLRB, and that the statutory removal protections for members of those agencies are unconstitutional. It therefore reversed the district court decisions in both cases.