It seems increasing likely that Gwynne Wilcox’s lawsuit challenging Donald Trump’s attempt to fire her in the middle of her five-year term as a Member of the National Labor Relations Board will, one way or the other, result in the end of the NLRB as we have known it.
Congress created the NLRB as an independent agency governed by a five-member Board. To ensure the Board Members’ independence, Congress provided that they could only be removed for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” In 1935, the Supreme Court decided Humphrey’s Executor, holding that similar job protections for commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) did not unconstitutionally infringe upon the President’s authority. The Court recognized that because the FTC commissioners exercised quasi-judicial authority, Congress wanted to ensure that the commissioners were able to act with impartiality, and protecting them from at-will removal furthered that goal. Needless to say, the same is true for the NLRB.
The National Labor Relations Act states that it is the policy of the United States to “encourag[e] the practice and procedure of collective bargaining,” and to protect “the exercise of workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purposes of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.” The Act makes it illegal for employers to interfere with these rights, but the...
Recently appointed Florida A&M Vice President and Director of Athletics Angela Suggs has been arrested and charged with grand theft and scheme to defraud and four misdemeanor counts of false cl...