A federal judge on Thursday ruled that President Trump unlawfully removed a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), suggesting in her ruling that the president sought to test the limits of his power in doing so.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled in favor of Gwynne Wilcox, who became the first to be removed from the board since its inception in 1935. The judge indefinitely reinstated Wilcox to her position, deeming the firing now “null and void.”
“The President seems intent on pushing the bounds of his office and exercising his power in a manner violative of clear statutory law to test how much the courts will accept the notion of a presidency that is supreme,” Howell wrote in a 36-page opinion.
“The courts are now again forced to determine how much encroachment on the legislature our Constitution can bear and face a slippery slope toward endorsing a presidency that is untouchable by the law,” she said. “The President has given no sufficient reason to accept that path here.”
Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve on the board, was confirmed in 2023 to a term lasting five years. Her firing left the NLRB with just two members and no quorum to conduct its usual business.
Deepak Gupta, a lawyer for Wilcox, argued during a hearing Wednesday that removing the board member effectively neutered the agency by blocking it from continuing to complete its congressionally mandated tasks.
“The president has given himself the power … to disable this agency from performing its function,” Gupta said.
Wilcox’s lawyers argued in court filings that her firing was a “blatant violation” of removal protections for NLRB members contained within the National Labor Relations Act, which says that presidents can remove members “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause.”
The Justice Department contended that the NLRB’s powers fall squarely under the executive, which the president is empowered to lead.
Justice Department lawyer Harry Graver said the board wields executive power through policymaking and that Trump is “100 percent politically accountable” for how it sets labor policy for the country, unlike judges in the judiciary branch whose actions are separate from the executive.
“The rules of the road are fundamentally different,” Graver said.
Gupta called the government’s theory of the case “truly unprecedented.” The “elephant in the room” is the unitary executive theory, he said, which provides the president total control over the executive branch.
“This current executive is taking out for a spin the most extreme version of that theory,” he said.
In her ruling Thursday, Howell laid into Trump as perhaps “fundamentally misapprehending” his role as a custodian of the law, pointing to a post on the social platform X by the White House that depicted Trump as a king.
“Luckily, the Framers, anticipating such a power grab, vested in Article III, not Article II, the power to interpret the law, including resolving conflicts about congressional checks on presidential authority,” Howell wrote. “The President’s interpretation of the scope of his constitutional power — or, more aptly, his aspiration — is flat wrong.”
Howell’s ruling marks the third time a federal judge has found Trump’s firings of independent agency members unlawful.
The firings of Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel, and Cathy Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board who chaired it during the Biden administration, were both deemed illegal.
They were reinstated to their roles, but on appeal, a panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit judges greenlighted Dellinger’s termination until they resolve the case, an indication that the court may ultimately side with the Trump administration.
Dellinger on Thursday announced that he would end his legal bid to remain in his post.
A summary judgment hearing in a challenge to the firing of a Democratic appointee to the Federal Labor Relations Authority is also set for Friday.
The remaining cases set the stage for a possible showdown at the Supreme Court over its 90-year-old precedent of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which has enabled Congress to protect certain independent agency leaders from termination without cause.
Howell herself called her court “merely a speed bump” on the road to the Supreme Court.
Updated 3:53 p.m.
