A federal judge agreed Thursday to reinstate a board member whom President Donald Trump removed from an independent labor agency.
National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox sued Trump after he fired her and the agency’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, on Jan. 27.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., ruled that Trump did not have the authority to remove Wilcox from the NLRB.
Wilcox’s attorneys said no president previously had tried to remove an NLRB member. They argued that board members can only be fired “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office” and only after giving notice and holding a hearing.
Trump’s “only path to victory” in Wilcox’s case would be to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to ”adopt a new, more aggressive vision of presidential power that would effectively abolish independent agencies” in the U.S., her lawyers wrote.
During a hearing Wednesday, Howell jokingly referred to herself as a “speed bump” for the case on its way to the Supreme Court.