Gwynne Wilcox, a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) fired by President Trump, sued him on Wednesday over the ouster.
Wilcox’s attorneys claim Trump’s firing was a “blatant violation” of NLRB members’ removal protections contained within the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
Some legal experts believe that the firings, along with Trump’s removal of two Democratic members from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, could tee up the overturning of a key Supreme Court precedent that for nearly a century has enabled Congress to prevent the president from removing members of multi-member independent agencies without cause.
“The President’s action against Ms. Wilcox is part of a string of openly illegal firings in the early days of the second Trump administration that are apparently designed to test Congress’s power to create independent agencies like the Board,” the lawsuit states.
“Although Ms. Wilcox has no desire to aid the President in establishing a test case, she is also cognizant of the fact that, if no challenge is made, the President will have effectively succeeded in rendering the NLRA’s protections—and, by extension, that of other independent agencies—nugatory,” it continued.
The NLRB declined to comment on the lawsuit.
President Biden first nominated Wilcox, a union lawyer, to the NLRB beginning in 2021. In September 2023, Congress confirmed her for a second term lasting five years. Before serving on the NLRB, Wilcox was a partner at Levy Ratner, P.C., a labor and employment law firm and associate general counsel of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.
Trump fired Wilcox on his first day in office, which left the NLRB with just two members, meaning it doesn’t have a quorum to conduct its normal business.
Calling the president’s removal “unprecedented and illegal,” Wilcox’s attorneys noted their client was the first Black woman to serve on the board and is the first to be removed from office since its inception in 1935. Their lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Federal law provides that the president can only remove NLRB members in cases of “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause,” and they must also be given “notice and hearing.”
“Under the NLRA’s plain language, Ms. Wilcox has a clear legal entitlement to retain her position as a member of the National Labor Relations Board,” Wilcox’s attorneys wrote.
In addition to her firing, Trump also ousted NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, effectively instituting a sweeping shift in the independent agency that enforces U.S. labor laws. The agency has been battling with large corporations, which have increasingly mounted legal efforts seeking to dismantle the agency as unconstitutional.
Trump’s firings are part of a blitz of sweeping actions he has taken during his first few weeks in office that are reshaping the federal government. The case is one of roughly three dozen lawsuits that have been filed across the country challenging the various actions.
