Court rules Trump's firing of labor board chief illegal, saying president is not a king [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Thu 6 Mar 2025 15.59 EST
First published on Thu 6 Mar 2025 15.55 EST


A federal court ruled that Donald Trump’s abrupt firing of a former senior official at the top US labor watchdog was illegal, and ordered that she be reinstated. Gwynne Wilcox was the first member of the National Labor Relations Board to be removed by a US president since the board’s inception in 1935.

The framers of the US constitution “made clear that no one in our system of government was meant to be king – the President included – and not just in name only”, the judge Beryl A Howell, wrote in the ruling.

Howell presided over the hearing held yesterday on a motion for summary judgment in the District of Columbia. “The President does not have the authority to terminate members of the National Labor Relations Board at will, and his attempt to fire plaintiff from her position on the Board was a blatant violation of the law,” she wrote.

Wilcox filed the lawsuit early last month, alleging her removal was a “blatant violation” of the National Labor Relations Act, which stipulates that members of the board can only be removed for negligence or misconduct. Her removal left the board with only two members, lacking the quorum of at least three members required to rule on cases.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/trump-labor-board-firing-gwynne-wilcox