Supreme Court won’t hear fired labour board member’s appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Gwynne Wilcox, a Democratic-appointed member of the National Labor Relations Board, who challenged her firing by President Donald Trump, Reuters reported.

The refusal ends Wilcox’s bid to get her seat back and leaves in place a December 2025 appeals court ruling that went against her. It was listed among the court’s Oct. 19 orders, and it follows the court’s June decision backing Trump’s removal of a Democratic member of another independent agency.

Trump fired Wilcox about a week into his second term, in January 2025. She sued, and in March 2025 U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell upheld the federal law that protects NLRB members from being removed without cause. Howell rejected Trump’s argument that the law intrudes on presidential authority under the Constitution, Reuters reported.

In December 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed that ruling by a 2-1 vote. Wilcox then asked the Supreme Court to take the case.

Reuters said the justices’ June decision backing Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, overturned the 1935 precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor. That precedent had recognized Congress’s power to shield certain regulatory agency leaders from removal by a president at will.

Bloomberg Law, in its coverage of the order, said the denial signals the broad reach of the Slaughter decision. The reports reviewed by Canada News Media did not give a vote count or any written dissent from the justices, and the court normally does not explain why it declines a case.

Wilcox was the first Black woman to serve on the NLRB. President Joe Biden appointed her to a second five-year term in 2023. Reuters described her firing as part of Trump’s broader effort to shrink the federal government and place independent agencies under presidential control, which has included mass firings and the installation of loyalists in key posts.

The labour board is the U.S. agency that enforces federal private-sector labour law, including union elections and unfair labour practice complaints. Canada’s equivalent bodies, such as the Canada Industrial Relations Board, are separate and are not affected by the ruling.

The order comes amid several other legal fights over presidential power. Earlier coverage on this site looked at a federal appeals court pressing the Justice Department on the D.C. National Guard mission and a judge’s decision to toss the Trump administration’s suit over New York City’s sanctuary laws.

The White House had not been quoted on the order in the reports reviewed. Wilcox’s lawyers had not publicly commented in those reports either.

Via Reuters (John Kruzel) and Bloomberg Law.

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