A case before the Supreme Court could expand the president's power to remove their leaders
Keep Independent Agencies Independent
A case before the Supreme Court could expand the president’s power to remove their leaders.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/opinion/seila-law-supreme-court.html?
President Trump has repeatedly used his office to further his personal political interests. But so far, he has been unable to interfere with the “independent agencies,” those parts of the government intended by Congress to operate outside of the president’s direct authority. A case set to be argued at the Supreme Court Tuesday threatens to change this.
The court’s decision in the case, Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, could strip these agencies of their independence by expanding the president’s power to remove their leaders.
<<snip>>
Seila, a California law firm under investigation by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — an independent agency with the job of protecting consumers from harmful financial products — argues that these limits on the president’s ability to fire the head of the bureau unconstitutionally restrict his authority. The bureau, now led by a Trump appointee and represented by the Justice Department, agrees.
Seila is asking the court to either hold that Seila does not have to comply with the bureau’s investigation into the firm’s marketing of debt-relief services, or abolish the bureau. The Justice Department proposes a more surgical remedy: striking the part of the law that limits the president to removing the bureau’s director only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. While the Justice Department argues that the court could leave other independent agencies intact (by resting its decision on unique aspects of the bureau’s design), both the department and Seila invite the court to conclude that similar restrictions on the president’s power to remove officials at other agencies are unconstitutional as well.
Such a general ruling, which would overturn 85 years of settled law, seems unlikely to garner five votes. But another position the court may consider is nearly as dangerous: that those eight magic words, “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” don’t actually make independent agencies all that independent after all.
<<snip>>