“An American President is not a king,” a federal judge wrote in ruling against President Donald Trump on Thursday. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., made the stark statement in rejecting Trump’s bid to fire Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board. 

“The President does not have the authority to terminate members of the National Labor Relations Board at will, and his attempt to fire plaintiff from her position on the Board was a blatant violation of the law,” Howell wrote. 

As I noted when Wilcox filed her lawsuit against what she called Trump’s “unprecedented and illegal” action, the case sets up a possible test of a long-standing Supreme Court precedent called Humphrey’s Executor, a 1935 decision that, as Wilcox put it in her complaint, “has ensured the independence of critical government agencies.” 

Humphrey’s Executor played a big role in Howell’s ruling. The judge wrote that it “remains not only binding law, but also a well-reasoned reflection of the balance of power between the political branches sanctioned by the Constitution.” The Obama appointee wrote that the precedent and subsequent cases citing it “control the outcome of this case and require that plaintiff be permitted to continue her role as Board member of the NLRB and her termination declared unlawful and void.” 

To be sure, this is a trial-level ruling — and one that may reflect a different view from that of the current Supreme Court majority when it comes to the separation of powers. But we may find out what the justices think soon enough, as they field a series of cases in the early days of Trump’s litigation-packed second term. 

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