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DC Circuit Decides Supreme Court Already Overturned Its Own Precedent And Just Didn't Tell Anyone -TPM
To hear DC Circuit Court Judge Justin Walker tell it, the Supreme Court basically already axed the last vestige of independent executive branch agency protections — it just did so very quietly.
Walker, a Trump appointee, with Judge Karen Henderson, a Bush appointee, on Friday allowed President Trump’s firings of board members at the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board to stand, despite clear Supreme Court precedent making those firings unlawful. The Trump Justice Department has said as much, acknowledging that the firings aren’t legal under current law, but maintaining that the law is unconstitutional. The administration is aiming to get the cases to the Supreme Court, betting that the right-wing majority is prepared to overturn Humphrey’s Executor, the 1935 precedent that has become the bastion of protection for independent, multi-member agencies like the NLRB and MSPB.
Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, wrote a scathing dissent to Friday’s order.
“After omitting what the Supreme Court actually said about Humphrey’s Executor in Free Enterprise, Seila Law, and Collins, Judge Walker discerns a clarity that everyone else has missed, announcing that the Supreme Court has imposed ‘a binding command on the lower courts’ not to extend Humphrey’s Executor to ‘any new contexts,’ so that this court ‘cannot extend Humphrey’s — not even an inch,’” she wrote.
She lambasted Walker for presuming “to do the Supreme Court’s job for it,” preemptively overturning the precedent which should still bind the lower courts.
Walker traced the Court’s history of hacking away independent agency protections, claiming that the remaining guardrails had been so narrowed as to be inapplicable to modern-day agencies.
Walker, a Trump appointee, with Judge Karen Henderson, a Bush appointee, on Friday allowed President Trump’s firings of board members at the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board to stand, despite clear Supreme Court precedent making those firings unlawful. The Trump Justice Department has said as much, acknowledging that the firings aren’t legal under current law, but maintaining that the law is unconstitutional. The administration is aiming to get the cases to the Supreme Court, betting that the right-wing majority is prepared to overturn Humphrey’s Executor, the 1935 precedent that has become the bastion of protection for independent, multi-member agencies like the NLRB and MSPB.
Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, wrote a scathing dissent to Friday’s order.
“After omitting what the Supreme Court actually said about Humphrey’s Executor in Free Enterprise, Seila Law, and Collins, Judge Walker discerns a clarity that everyone else has missed, announcing that the Supreme Court has imposed ‘a binding command on the lower courts’ not to extend Humphrey’s Executor to ‘any new contexts,’ so that this court ‘cannot extend Humphrey’s — not even an inch,’” she wrote.
She lambasted Walker for presuming “to do the Supreme Court’s job for it,” preemptively overturning the precedent which should still bind the lower courts.
Walker traced the Court’s history of hacking away independent agency protections, claiming that the remaining guardrails had been so narrowed as to be inapplicable to modern-day agencies.
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