The Supreme Court has declined to take up the case of Gwynne Wilcox, a Democrat-appointed member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) who was fired last year by President Donald Trump.
The justices turned down Wilcox’s petition on Oct. 19 in an unsigned order. No justices dissented. No reasons were provided.
The decision leaves intact a December 2025 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the president may remove NLRB members at will. It follows the Supreme Court’s June 29 decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which overruled the 1935 precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, and held that Congress may not restrict the president’s power to fire members of multi-member independent agencies that exercise executive power.
Wilcox was appointed to the NLRB by President Joe Biden in 2021 after Senate confirmation. She was reappointed in 2023. Under the National Labor Relations Act, the NLRB hears complaints about employers engaged in alleged unfair labor practices.
Trump ordered Wilcox fired on Jan. 27, 2025, and notified her by email.
The email said the NLRB was “not presently fulfilling its responsibility to the American people,” and that it would be in a better position to comply with administration objectives “with personnel of [Trump’s] own selection.” The email said Wilcox “had not, in [Trump’s] judgment, been operating in a manner consistent with the objectives of [his] administration.”
The email also said that several of Wilcox’s decisions were improper because they raised “serious First Amendment concerns” and “vastly exceeded the bounds of the National Labor Relations Act.”
The National Labor Relations Act states that a member of the NLRB may be fired by the president for neglect of duty or “malfeasance” in office.
Wilcox sued in federal district court in Washington and won a summary judgment on March 6, 2025, that said her removal was “unlawful” and that she “remains a member” of the NLRB who can be removed by the president only on grounds provided in the National Labor Relations Act.
The court rejected the Trump administration’s argument that the tenure protection provided by the statute violates Article II of the Constitution, which spells out the president’s powers.
The district court held that it was bound by Humphrey’s Executor, a ruling in which the Supreme Court determined that President Franklin Roosevelt acted unlawfully when he terminated the head of the Federal Trade Commission, a so-called independent executive agency, without cause.
The executive branch is not “strictly unitary” and the president’s power to remove officials “has never been viewed as unrestricted,” the district court held.
A divided D.C. Circuit then ruled on Dec. 5, 2025, that Trump may fire members of independent labor boards, including the NLRB.
Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas said that the issue was whether Congress may constitutionally forbid the president from removing members of the NLRB without cause.
“Congress cannot restrict the President’s ability to remove” NLRB members because the board wields “substantial executive power,” he said.
Circuit Judge Florence Pan dissented, questioning the government’s argument that allowing the president to fire NLRB members upholds the separation of powers. The separation of powers is a constitutional doctrine that divides the government into three branches to prevent any single branch from accumulating too much power.
The government’s theory “concentrates excessive power in the president and thus paves the way to autocracy,” she said.
In her June 27 petition to the Supreme Court, filed while Trump v. Slaughter was still pending, Wilcox’s attorneys said the court’s forthcoming ruling would not automatically resolve the issues in her case.
They argued that the NLRB’s five-member board is primarily adjudicatory: members apply federal labor law to cases brought before them and have no independent power to investigate or prosecute. Those functions belong to a separate general counsel who can be removed at will. They asked the court either to send the case back for reconsideration once Slaughter was decided, or to hear the NLRB case itself.
“The alternative—to leave a critical federal agency under a cloud of constitutional uncertainty—is untenable,” they said.
To leave the NLRB’s status under Slaughter unresolved would cast its decisions on labor disputes into doubt, “depriving the agency’s stakeholders, and the agency itself, of the certainty they urgently need.”
In a Sept. 14 brief in opposition, the government said in light of the Slaughter ruling, Wilcox’s claims “clearly lack merit,” so the petition should be denied.
The government added that Slaughter resolved the constitutional question for agencies exercising substantial executive power, including the NLRB.
The Supreme Court’s denial of the petition means the D.C. Circuit’s December 2025 ruling remains the last word on Wilcox’s case. It also signals that the Supreme Court is not inclined to carve out special exceptions for the NLRB after its broader ruling in Slaughter.
We had a problem loading this article. Please enable javascript or use a different browser. If the issue persists, please visit our help center.