


The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court for legal permission to fire three Democratic-appointed members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission after the move was blocked by a lower court.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox previously ruled that Trump’s termination of Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka Jr. was unlawful. He argued that the firings went against the provision that a president could only fire commissioners for neglect of duty or malfeasance. Solicitor General D. John Sauer is now taking the matter to the nation’s highest court.
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In the filing, Maddox alleged that the three members immediately worked to sabotage the work of the CPSC, and were effective in doing so due to their making up a majority on the five-member board. He also pointed out that they were undermining the work of the CPSC’s acting chairman, to whom “Congress has vested the agency’s ‘executive and administrative functions.’”
Maddox further alleged that the members were threatening staff, throwing the agency into chaos.
“The Acting Chairman views respondents’ actions as procedurally improper and thus invalid, but one of the respondents has threatened agency staff: ‘If you chose to ignore the directive of the Commission, I suggest you read the [district court’s] order and decide whether you want to personally violate it,’” Maddox wrote.
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“Respondents’ actions have thus thrown the agency into chaos and have put agency staff in the untenable position of deciding which Commissioners’ directives to follow,” he added.
The episode represents the latest of many legal struggles faced by the Trump administration, which has been hounded by legal barriers every step of the way in carrying out its agenda.