Trump’s authority to fire officials questioned in court battle over NLRB seat

The Trump administration appealed a federal judge’s decision Thursday that the administration’s firing of a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member was illegal – the same day that the former head of the Office of the Special Counsel announced he was dropping his suit against President Donald Trump on similar grounds. 

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered Thursday that NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox be reinstated after she had been fired by Trump earlier this year. Wilcox filed suit in D.C. federal court, arguing that her termination violates the congressional statute delineating NLRB appointments and removals. 

‘A President who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution,’ Howell wrote in her Thursday opinion. 

The Trump administration filed its appeal to the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit shortly after the decision was issued. The administration wrote in its appeal that it intended to request a stay of the order pending appeal, ‘including an immediate administrative stay’ from the appellate court. 

In her Thursday opinion, Howell had some harsh words for the president, writing that his ‘interpretation of the scope of his constitutional power – or, more aptly, his aspiration – is flat wrong.’

‘At issue in this case is the President’s insistence that he has authority to fire whomever he wants within the Executive branch, overriding any congressionally mandated law in his way,’ Howell wrote. 

Howell’s decision came on the same day that Hampton Dellinger, a Biden-appointee previously tapped to head the Office of Special Counsel, announced that he would be dropping his suit against the Trump administration over his own termination. 

‘My fight to stay on the job was not for me, but rather for the ideal that OSC should be as Congress intended: an independent watchdog and a safe, trustworthy place for whistleblowers to report wrongdoing and be protected from retaliation,’ Dellinger said in a statement released Thursday. 

Dellinger’s announcement was preceded by a D.C. appellate court’s Wednesday holding that sided with the Trump administration. 

The court issued an unsigned order pausing a lower court order that had reinstated Dellinger to his post. 

‘Thank you to the countless DOJ lawyers working around the clock each and every day to defend the President’s actions and uphold the Constitution against baseless attacks,’ a Department of Justice spokesperson told Fox News at the time. 

Dellinger said in his announcement that he believes the circuit judges ‘erred badly’ in their Wednesday decision, saying that it ‘immediately erases the independence Congress provided for my position.’

‘And given the circuit court’s adverse ruling, I think my odds of ultimately prevailing before the Supreme Court are long,’ Dellinger said. ‘Meanwhile, the harm to the agency and those who rely on it caused by a Special Counsel who is not independent could be immediate, grievous, and, I fear, uncorrectable.’

Similar to Wilcox, Dellinger sued the Trump administration in D.C. federal court after his Feb. 7 firing. 

He maintained the argument that, by law, he can only be dismissed from his position for job performance problems, which were not cited in an email dismissing him from his post.

The Supreme Court had previously paused the Trump administration’s efforts to dismiss Dellinger. The administration had asked the high court to overturn a lower court’s temporary reinstatement of Dellinger. 

Fox News’ Jake Gibson, Bill Mears, Shannon Bream, and David Spunt contributed to this report.