Trump’s firings of federal officials set stage for next test of presidential power
Washington (CBS NEWS) – Sources from CBS News say that the Supreme Court just over a month ago expanded presidential power when it struck down removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission, clearing the way for the president to fire members of certain independent boards and commissions at will.
But as the high court considered the legality of Congress’ efforts to shield those officials from political pressure, legal fights arising from President Trump’s attempts to fire an array of other federal workers — from Justice Department lawyers to immigration judges to FBI agents — have been moving through the federal courts.
The cases could pose the next test of presidential power and have significant implications for civil service protections that have been in place since the late 1970s and the federal workers covered by them, legal scholars say.
“The question of whether we can have a civil service staffed by individuals who are selected and retained based on their expertise, qualifications and employment performance, rather than the political ideology of the president is the entire foundation of our modern system of administrative governance,” Nicholas Bednar, a University of Minnesota law professor who has studied the civil service, told CBS News.
Since the start of his second term, Mr. Trump has undertaken sweeping efforts to reshape the federal government. As part of his plans, which include downsizing the executive branch, more than 25,000 government workers who were still in their probationary periods were terminated and agencies implemented plans for mass layoffs, called reductions in force.
But for hundreds of other civil servants — those considered “inferior officers,” as well as employees — the president has invoked Article II of the Constitution to fire them outside of procedures dictated by civil service laws, arguing it is an exercise of his executive power. “Inferior” executive branch officials may be appointed by the president or the head of a department, and they’re generally supervised by principal officers, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Mr. Trump’s firings of those federal officials are now on a track headed for the Supreme Court, as a federal appeals court is poised to hear arguments this fall in a case brought by two former immigration judges, Megan Jackler and Brandon Jaroch, who were terminated in February 2025. While cases before appeals courts are typically heard first by three-judge panels, the Federal Circuit in June granted Jackler and Jaroch’s request for its full slate of judges to consider their case from the outset — an indication that it recognizes the importance of the dispute.
“This is the case that is going to go to the Supreme Court to test this issue,” Bednar said of whether the president has the power to remove federal employees without cause.
Jackler and Jaroch’s case landed before the Federal Circuit after the Merit Systems Protection Board, which hears appeals from federal employees of adverse actions, ruled in favor of the Justice Department. In a little-noticed March decision, the board found that “no entity, including Congress or the Board, may place restrictions” on the president’s removal authority, “for doing so would infringe upon the president’s ability to faithfully execute the laws.”
The Justice Department had argued that Article II invalidated removal protections for inferior officers under the Civil Service Reform Act, a landmark law enacted in 1978 that provides protections for federal workers, and the Merit Systems Protection Board agreed.
“The government’s argument in Jackler is potentially so sweeping it would mean the president could fire every single civil servant at will,” Nathaniel Zelinsky, a lawyer representing Jackler and Jaroch, told CBS News. “The issue in this case is about whether this country can have civil service laws at all or instead, whether the president can fire whomever he wants, whenever he wants, for any reason.”
He continued: “If the president is right in this case, it doesn’t mean that just Megan Jackler and Brandon Jaroch can be fired at will. It would likely mean that every single one of the millions of federal workers throughout the federal government would not be protected from arbitrary abuse, discrimination and retaliation.”
Trump’s power to fire principal officers
The decision from the Merit Systems Protection Board came as the Supreme Court was considering the case Trump v. Slaughter, which arose out of the president’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission. Slaughter was ousted from her role in March 2025, soon after Jackler and Jaroch lost their jobs as immigration judges.
In a majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court’s conservative majority said Congress cannot “saddle” the president with officials “with whom he cannot work.”
“Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him,” Roberts wrote. “Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.”
The decision is likely to have ramifications for dozens of other independent multimember agencies, which Congress sought to insulate from politics by allowing the president to remove their members only for cause — typically instances of inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.
While that case before the Supreme Court solely involved the president’s ability to remove principal officers, legal scholars noted that the language in Roberts’ opinion can be read to apply beyond those officials.
“‘What text, history and structure settle, our precedent confirms: the president may remove his subordinates at will.’ That’s pretty broad,” said Joel Alicea, a law professor at Catholic University, quoting Roberts’ decision. “That language does not seem to limit itself to principal officers. The opinion does not often focus on principal officers. It seems to just focus on the logic of all the executive powers being vested in the president, so anyone who’s exercising that power has to be removable at will. Well, if that’s the logic, that arguably includes inferior officers and employees, too.”
And already, the Justice Department has argued in other legal battles that the Supreme Court’s decision bolsters its view that federal employees can be fired at will.
Citing Roberts’ majority opinion, Justice Department lawyers wrote in a July filing defending Mr. Trump’s firing of Mary Comans from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “The president can only be ‘personally responsible for everything’ in the Executive Branch if he is personally responsible for — and therefore able to freely remove — officials exercising those functions Ms. Comans exercised in her former role.”
A federal judge ruled in July that Comans’ firing was unlawful. The Justice Department has appealed the decision.
“If I’m the Justice Department working on any of these cases, the first thing I do is cite Slaughter and say Slaughter says we can remove subordinates. Employees and inferior officers are subordinates, ergo this case is covered by Slaughter,” Bednar said. “The chief gave them that fuel. The chief could’ve written an opinion that just said principal officers, and Slaughter wouldn’t have given them much to go off of.”
Instead, by talking broadly about “subordinates,” Bednar said, it “raises this question of whether the civil service and inferior officers might be next.”
The Supreme Court’s decision invalidating removal protections for members of certain independent agencies capped a string of rulings that chipped away at a 1935 decision that allowed Congress to limit the president’s ability to fire those officials at will. The court’s conservative majority officially overruled that New Deal-era precedent in June.
But the high court has in a series of decisions over the last 140 years — most recently in 2021 — upheld the civil service system and reaffirmed that Congress can “limit and restrict” the removal of inferior officers.
In his June opinion in Slaughter’s case, Roberts noted that the court did not “determine the fate of officials not before us.” And in a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch highlighted civil service laws, writing they “ordinarily afford rank-and-file agency employees considerable protection against removal.” Still, he added that a president can “seek to exert greater control” over federal workers by reclassifying their roles to be outside the reach of those laws.
“The government certainly faces, we think, a high hurdle in this case,” Zelinsky said. “We think the arguments for these civil service laws being constitutional are incredibly strong. They are deeply rooted in the nation’s history and tradition and precedent. It would be astonishing if the Constitution granted the president the authority not just to fire millions of federal workers, but to affirmatively discriminate against them on the basis of their partisanship, their religion, their sex.”
Still, in a dissenting opinion in the Slaughter case in June, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned the ruling could have “major implications for inferior officers and civil-service employees.” The majority, she said, “at best consigns these issues to years of future uncertainty and at worst risks the end of the employment protections that apply to members of the civil service.”
“This court does seem pretty committed to the formalist and textualist position that all executive power is vested in the president,” Alicea said. “If that is true, it is hard to see how that does not extend to inferior officers, so I would think they might carry it to that logical conclusion.”
