High Court Deals Blow to Agency Officials Fighting Trump Firings

Independent agency officials removed by President Donald Trump will have a harder time winning legal challenges after the US Supreme Court blocked the reinstatement of fired members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority signaled to lower courts Thursday that it takes a narrow view of the exceptions to what it sees as broad presidential power to dismiss independent agency officials, consistent with what the Trump administration has argued, legal scholars said.

“The court is giving marching orders of a sort here,” said Neal Devins, a law professor at the College ...