President Trump followed up his rampage through the National Labor Relations Board (Trump Goes Pearl Harbor on the National Labor Relations Board, Fires Chairman and General Counsel) by firing two Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioners and its general counsel. The newly reduced EEOC can no longer bring enforcement actions or initiate rulemaking as it doesn't have a quorum. //

Under Joe Biden, the EEOC bullied companies into submitting to DEI and replacing Equality with Equity.

Much like the defenestrated acting chairman at the NLRB, the two fired Democrats were not happy about the cruel turn of fate. //

Unlike the NLRB commissioner, whose firing seems questionable because the law says NLRB commissioners can only be fired for cause, the EEOC's enabling legislation does not require that.

The EEOC now only has two members and cannot act until President Trump nominates replacements. This is mostly a good thing.

I think there is something else going on with these firings. It seems like the Trump White House may be teeing up a challenge to a Supreme Court case.

In 2020, the CFPB was challenged for its blatantly unconstitutional structure. Under the law, it was managed by a single director who could only be removed "for cause." The Supreme Court agreed that allowing a single individual to control an agency outside the reach of the president to remove them was unconstitutional.

I believe the target of Trump's removal of three commissioners, one who can only be removed for cause and two without similar protections, is to convince the Supreme Court to overturn Humphrey's Executor vs. United States. This 1935 decision held that the president could only remove the commissioner of independent agencies for reasons established by Congress. The Selia decision established that did not apply to single commissioners; Trump wants to take a run at it to see if he can get that precedent overturned the way Chevron was reversed last summer; //

We'll see how this turns out, but even if Trump is wrong, the NLRB and EEOC will not be lumbering about the countryside and disturbing the livestock until the Supreme Court speaks. //

OrneryCoot
3 hours ago
There is something inherently wrong with the idea that the leader of the executive branch of government cannot fire persons under his authority, tasked with implementing his policy, in the executive branch. That is all kinds of "only in Washington" dumb. Trump is right to blast through that and try to tee up a SCOTUS decision. In the meantime, I will breathe a sigh of relief that these people are removed from their positions of power. Democrat appointed workers in the administrative state are open sores that need to be cut out.