Trump moves to fire members of EEOC and NLRB, breaking with precedent

- ADVERTISEMENT -
Share
EEOC. PHOTO: Screenshot @eeoc.gov

President Donald Trump has moved to fire Democratic members of two independent federal commissions, an extraordinary break from decades of legal precedent that promises to hand Republicans control over boards that oversee swaths of U.S. workers, employers and labor unions.

On Monday night, he dismissed two of the three Democrats on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – Jocelyn Samuels and Charlotte Burrows, formerly the chair, the White House confirmed Tuesday. He also fired the chair of the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox, a Democrat, an NLRB spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.

All three said they are exploring their legal options against the administration – cases that legal scholars say could reach as far as the Supreme Court.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

Trump also removed the EEOC’s general counsel, Karla Gilbride, who oversaw civil actions against employers on a range of issues, including discrimination claims from LGBTQ+ and pregnant workers. And he terminated Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s general counsel. Their departures throw into question the status of numerous actions underway at both agencies, including against billionaire Elon Musk’s electric car company, Tesla.

“These were far-left appointees with radical records of upending long-standing labor law, and they have no place as senior appointees in the Trump administration, which was given a mandate by the American people to undo the radical policies they created,” a White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the administration.

In statements issued Tuesday, Burrows and Samuels both called their removals “unprecedented.”

“Removing me from my position before the expiration of my Congressionally directed term is unprecedented, violates the law, and represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the EEOC as an independent agency – one that is not controlled by a single Cabinet secretary but operates as a multimember body whose varying views are baked into the Commission’s design,” Samuels wrote.

In dismissing her, she added, the White House critiqued her views on sex discrimination, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, and accessibility issues. She said the criticism misconstrued “the basic principles of equal employment opportunity.”

Burrows wrote that her removal “will undermine the efforts of this independent agency to do the important work of protecting employees from discrimination, supporting employers’ compliance efforts, and expanding public awareness and understanding of federal employment laws.”

Wilcox, the NLRB member, wrote in a statement that she would pursue “all legal avenues to challenge my removal, which violates long-standing Supreme Court precedent.”

The removal of general counsels is not without precedent: President Joe Biden fired Trump-appointed general counsels at the EEOC and NLRB upon entering office in 2021. Yet dismissing members of independent commissions represents a dramatic break from Supreme Court precedent dating to 1935, which holds that the president cannot remove members of independent agencies such as the EEOC except in cases of neglect of duty, malfeasance or inefficiency.

Trump’s actions leave both five-member boards without enough members to conduct business. Both boards now only have two members; Trump must fill the vacancies and await Senate approval.

Legal experts were troubled by Trump’s move.

There are “concerns that this is the first step toward erosion of workplace protections against discrimination in the workplace,” said Kevin Owen, an employment attorney in Maryland focusing on federal employees.

“This may herald the end of the EEOC as we know it.”

Trump has espoused an expansive view of executive power and campaigned on seizing more control over agencies that traditionally operated largely independent of the White House, including the EEOC and NLRB. His maneuvers also call into question whether he will take similar actions at other independent agencies.

“I will bring the independent regulatory agencies such as the [Federal Communications Commission] and the [Federal Trade Commission] back under presidential authority as the Constitution demands,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social in April 2023. “These agencies do not get to become a fourth branch of government, issuing rules and edicts all by themselves, and that’s what they’ve been doing.”

Taking control of the agencies could allow Trump to more aggressively pursue his agenda.

The dismissal of the two Democratic EEOC commissioners – Samuels and Burrows – allows Trump to replace them with Republicans and give the five-member commission a conservative majority. One seat was vacant before the dismissals.

Last week, Trump appointed Andrea Lucas, the board’s only Republican, as acting chair. With a GOP majority, Lucas would be able to more freely pursue her priorities, which include “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination” and “defending the biological and binary reality of sex.” The EEOC has the power to open investigations and pursue civil charges against employers it alleges have violated federal laws barring workplace discrimination.

Trump’s firing of NLRB board member Wilcox imperils long-standing union rights in the United States enforced by the NLRB, legal experts said.

“This has the potential to result in rulings that either change the way the [labor] board is structured or even limit the board’s ability to function going forward,” said Kate Andrias, a professor at Columbia Law School.

The NLRB – which oversees unionization votes by workers and adjudicates allegations of illegal union busting – has faced a flurry of legal challenges to its constitutionality, brought last year by SpaceX, Amazon and other high-profile companies, emboldened by a conservative Supreme Court. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Those cases are slowly working through the federal court system. But legal experts say that Wilcox’s firing could propel the issue to the high court more quickly.

“The Trump administration along with the architects of Project 2025 are aiming to do away with the National Labor Relations Act,” said Seth Goldstein, a labor lawyer who has represented Amazon and Trader Joe’s workers. He referred to the 1935 law that established the NLRB and modern union rights. “They want to end worker rights and return us to the Gilded Age,” he said.

Gilbride, the EEOC general counsel fired on Monday, criticized Trump’s executive orders in a statement to The Post on Tuesday.

She said she was disheartened by his directives regarding gender identity, as well as the recent effort to remove diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from the federal government.

They “seem intended to distract federal agencies from their day-to-day work of serving the public and instead force them to focus on settling scores with, and erasing traces of, the previous administration,” she wrote.