Supreme Court Declines to Hear Fired NLRB Member's Removal Challenge, Cementing Trump's Agency Authority

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Gwynne Wilcox, the former Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board whom President Trump removed from office six days into his second term, closing off her last avenue for reinstatement and cementing a lower-court ruling that gives the president wide latitude to fire officials at independent federal agencies.

The justices turned away the case, Wilcox v. Trump, without comment or recorded dissent, according to the order list the Court issued Monday. The denial leaves standing a December 2025 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which held that Congress cannot shield NLRB members from at-will removal because the board "wield[s] substantial executive power." The case's docket entry shows the petition was simply marked denied, with no opinion attached.

A Fight That Outlasted Its Own Legal Question

The dispute began on January 27, 2025, when President Trump removed Wilcox from the five-member board, even though her second term, to which she had been confirmed by the Senate in September 2023, was not due to expire until August 2028. Wilcox sued within days, and a federal district judge in Washington ordered her reinstated that March, finding the removal violated the National Labor Relations Act's requirement that a member be fired only "for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office" after notice and a hearing.

That victory was short-lived. The Supreme Court stayed her reinstatement in the spring of 2025 while the underlying appeal moved forward, and the D.C. Circuit ultimately sided with the administration, ruling 2-1 that the board's removal protections could not survive scrutiny under Article II. The full appeals court declined to rehear the case in January 2026. Wilcox then asked the Supreme Court to take up the question directly, filing her certiorari petition in June 2026 and arguing, according to her brief, that the NLRB is "unique among independent federal agencies" because its board functions much like an appellate court adjudicating disputes between private parties, rather than exercising ordinary executive authority.

Overtaken by a Bigger Ruling

By the time the justices considered her petition, the central constitutional question had already been answered in a separate case. In June 2026, the Court ruled 6-3 in Trump v. Slaughter that for-cause removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers, explicitly overturning the Court's 1935 precedent in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, which had shielded multimember regulatory boards from presidential removal for nearly a century. In a separate order the same day, the Court carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve, finding it unlikely the administration could show the central bank's leadership falls under the same rule. The Trump administration told the Court in its filings that "Slaughter made clear Wilcox's arguments have no merit," and the justices evidently agreed, disposing of her case without further briefing or argument.

A similar challenge brought by Cathy Harris, a former member of the Merit Systems Protection Board whom Trump also removed in his first days in office, met the same fate when the Court declined to hear it earlier in the summer.

A Board Reshaped

The practical consequences of Wilcox's removal rippled through the agency for more than a year. With her seat vacant, the board briefly lacked the three-member quorum it needs to issue binding decisions, a gap that persisted until two new members were sworn in last January. The Senate confirmed two additional nominees in August, James Macy and David Prouty, to five-year terms running through 2031, giving the board a 3-1 Republican majority under Chairman James Murphy, according to a summary of the confirmations. Wilcox's old seat remains vacant; her official biography on the agency's website still lists her as the first Black woman to chair the NLRB since its creation in 1935, a position she held for about five weeks before her removal.

Employers and unions with cases pending before the board are among those most directly affected. Monday's denial forecloses any argument that decisions issued by the reconstituted, Republican-majority board are tainted by an unlawfully composed panel, lawyers who track the agency said, while leaving open separate, narrower litigation over specific board rulings that unions have argued should be revisited.

"Slaughter made clear Wilcox's arguments have no merit," the Trump administration told the justices in the brief urging them to reject her appeal.

Reaction and What Comes Next

Wilcox said in a statement Monday that she was disappointed the Court had declined to hear her case, "not only for myself, but also for the workers and employers" who rely on the board, and argued the agency needs to be free from political pressure to function as Congress intended. The denial ends her litigation; there is no further appeal available once the Supreme Court has denied certiorari.

Labor-side attorneys following the case, including analysts at the National Law Review and Ogletree Deakins, said the outcome confirms that Slaughter's holding extends well beyond the FTC to other multimember agencies that combine investigative and adjudicative functions, including the NLRB, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. One open question those attorneys flagged is how far the reasoning will reach into agencies whose leaders have day-to-day authority over markets or benefits, a line the Court drew only narrowly around the Federal Reserve in its companion ruling, Trump v. Cook, which legal analysts have noted left the central bank's own removal protections in place for now, at least while separate litigation over Fed Governor Lisa Cook's position continues in the lower courts.

For now, the NLRB will continue operating under its current Republican majority, with no mechanism remaining for Wilcox to contest either her removal or the composition of the board that replaced her.