CPSC Survives Constitutional Challenge Over Removal of Members

The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s structure, allowing the removal of members only for cause, survived a constitutional challenge after the Fifth Circuit found a New Deal-era Supreme Court ruling permits the restrictions on presidential power.

The decision came as the US Supreme Court “in recent years has taken a keen interest in administrative law,” and has been “reexamining foundational notions of federal regulatory power,” the Fifth Circuit said. The high court this term “is revisiting so-called Chevron deference, the 40-year-old doctrine under which courts defer to agency interpretations of ambiguous laws.”

Here, the Fifth Circuit applied the high court’s ruling ...