Key Background
The Supreme Court’s ruling comes after justices had already allowed Trump to fire multiple independent board members even before it decided the fate of the Humphrey’s Executor precedent, including officials on the National Labor Relations Board, Merit Systems Protection Board and Consumer Product Safety Commission. The Humphrey’s Executor ruling in the 1930s was based on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s firing of Federal Trade Commissioner William Humphrey. Humphrey died a year after the decision, and his estate sued the federal government for back pay, arguing he was unlawfully fired because it wasn’t for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office”—which justices agreed with. Justices have historically upheld Humphrey’s Executor, and the Supreme Court hadn’t said much about the precedent in recent months, even as it allowed Trump to fire officials despite the longstanding ruling. The last major case that dealt with the precedent came in 2020, when the court ruled the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was not covered under the heightened standard for firing federal officials.
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Further Reading
Supreme Court May Let Trump Fire More Federal Officials, Justices Indicate (Forbes)
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