A federal appeals court had declined to lift a lower court order blocking the removal of three Biden appointees.
President Donald Trump filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court on July 2, asking the justices to let him fire three Biden appointees at the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The application in Trump v. Boyle, filed by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, was directed to Chief Justice John Roberts.
The legal filing is the president’s latest effort to remove political appointees at an independent federal agency whose appointees have traditionally been shielded from termination without cause.
The application comes after the Supreme Court, on May 22, formally blocked lower court rulings that prevented Trump from firing members of independent labor boards.
In Trump v. Wilcox, the nation’s highest court temporarily halted orders by two Washington-based federal judges that blocked the president’s terminations of Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board before their terms expired.
But on June 23, a federal district judge “chose a different path—one that has sown chaos and dysfunction at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and that warrants this Court’s immediate intervention,” the application says.
In May, Trump removed three members of the CPSC: respondents Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka Jr., all of whom had been appointed by President Joe Biden.
The district judge blocked the firings, relying on a statute he said insulates CPSC members from removal at will, countermanding Trump’s decision and ordering the respondents reinstated.
In May, Trump removed three members of the CPSC: respondents Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka Jr., all of whom had been appointed by President Joe Biden.
The district judge blocked the firings, relying on a statute he said insulates CPSC members from removal at will, countermanding Trump’s decision and ordering the respondents reinstated.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox of Maryland wrote that removing three sitting members of the five-member commission “threatens severe impairment of [the commission’s] ability to fulfill its statutory mandates and advance the public’s interest in safe consumer products.”
