Supreme Court won’t reinstate top federal labor officials in a victory for Trump’s firing powers

By Marshall Cohen, Devan Cole and John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Thursday said President Donald Trump doesn’t have to rehire senior officials he fired from two independent federal labor agencies that enforce worker protections, while the officials continue fighting in court to reverse their terminations.

The officials were already taken off the job in early April when Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative order to temporarily pause their reinstatement while the full Supreme Court reviewed the matter. The latest decision extends their dismissal, perhaps forever, if the lower courts reviewing the matter don’t rule again in their favor.

This is a significant victory for Trump and his efforts to assert control over federal agencies that Congress designed to be independent from White House meddling. The ruling is temporary but shows that the justices are receptive to Trump’s claims of vast presidential power over hiring decisions and may side with him if the case returns to the high court.

The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices – Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Kentanji Brown Jackson – dissented.

The officials are Cathy Harris, former chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews federal firings and can reinstate wrongly terminated workers, and Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board. Both women are Democrats and were appointed by former President Joe Biden to statutory terms that weren’t set to expire for years.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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