A Maryland judge denied a request that would allow three former Consumer Product Safety Commissioners to return to work while the case is litigated in court. 

President Joe Biden’s appointees Richard Trumka, Mary Boyle, and Alexander Hoehn-Saric were informed of their removal earlier this month.

The three former federal workers claim in a lawsuit that President Trump illegally fired them without cause. They sought a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction that would allow them to continue working, which was turned down on Tuesday.

The CPSC is an independent agency that regulates the safety of consumer products, from toys to appliances. It’s the group that often handles recalls of items such as kitchen ranges that can set fires and steam cleaners that have burned users. It is bipartisan and comprises five commissioners who serve for staggered seven-year terms.

Does there need to be a cause for firings?

The case questions whether the president can fire members of an independent board created by Congress. Attorneys for the fired commissioners say the president can’t fire them without cause, and there must be neglect or maleficence.

“At no point has the administration alleged any neglect of duty or malfeasance in office,” said Nicolas Sansone, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group who is representing the former commissioners.

Attorneys for the commissioners argued the CPSC falls under an exception in a 1935 Supreme Court ruling. In that case, Humphreys’ Executor v. United States, the high court found that Congress could impose for-cause removal protections to multi-member commissions of experts that are balanced along partisan lines and do not exercise any executive power.

Can Trump authorize firings of CPSC commissioners?

Attorneys for the Trump administration argue he has the executive power to remove people in those positions. It also argued it would be more harmful to continually bring back and let go of these officials during litigation.

Earlier this month, CBS News reported that White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that the CPSC falls under the executive branch, giving the president the right to fire employees there.

Speaking out against the removals

On May 14, the fired commissioners joined Senators in speaking out against their removal.

Trumka says the commission issued 333 recalls last year on 150 million products. He believes he was fired after advancing a solution on lithium-ion batteries, refusing to let DOGE review records, and saying the commission wouldn’t allow their staff to be fired. Now, he isn’t sure the work is being done to protect the public.

“We’ve pushed hard to protect your families as much as we protect our own. For that, we were illegally fired,” Trumka said on May 14. “When we win and we’re put back into our jobs. I can’t wait to get back to that work, because I want to follow through on our commitments that we’ve made to deliver safety rules for all of you this year.”

Supreme Court takes on a similar case

The Supreme Court allowed President Trump to remove two members of federal independent labor boards while legal proceedings over their firings move forward last week.

The high court granted a request for emergency relief from the Trump administration to pause a pair of lower court rulings that voided Trump’s removals of Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board.

“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents,” the court said. “The stay reflects our judgment that the Government is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power. But we do not ultimately decide in this posture whether the NLRB or MSPB falls within such a recognized exception; that question is better left for resolution after full briefing and argument.”

It also said the continuous removal and reinstatement of officials during litigation would be “disruptive”.

DOGE firings 

DOGE has sought to cut federal workers in the name of reducing fraud, waste and abuse. But many of its firings have had to be reversed, either because the group mistakenly fired essential workers — like bird-flu experts with the U.S. Department of Agriculture — or after a court ruled the dismissals were illegal. 

DOGE’s savings have largely been wiped out by costs related to those issues as well as lost productivity, according to a recent analysis by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that focuses on the federal workforce.

The CPSC firings come after the Trump administration dismissed other officials at independent agencies, including the vice chair of the National Transportation Safety Board this week and a member of the National Labor Relations Board in January.