The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to let it remove the leaders of two independent agencies while their challenges to their dismissals move forward in court.
In addition to asking the justices to pause an appeals court ruling requiring the officials’ reinstatements, the administration asked the court to grant review of the cases and schedule arguments at a special session of the court in May, with a decision to follow by July.
“We acknowledge the concerns surrounding litigating and deciding the important questions raised by these cases on such a short timeline,” wrote D. John Sauer, the solicitor general.
But he said the alternative was unacceptable, as it would allow the two agencies, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board, to be overseen by officials hostile to the administration’s goals.
“The president should not be forced to delegate his executive power to agency heads who are demonstrably at odds with the administration’s policy objectives for a single day — much less for the months that it would likely take for the courts to resolve this litigation,” Mr. Sauer wrote.
If the Supreme Court does not act, he wrote, “the president might be forced to continue entrusting executive power to fired officers for more than a quarter of his four-year term.”