US labor board opts not to defend law barring Trump from firing Democratic member

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) - The U.S. agency that enforces the labor rights of private-sector workers is abandoning its legal defense of a law barring the president from removing appointees at will, as President Donald Trump seeks to oust a Democratic member.

The National Labor Relations Board has since last week notified courts in at least six cases, including one involving Elon Musk's SpaceX, that it was taking the position that protections from removal for board members and administrative judges violate the U.S. Constitution.

Several federal judges have upheld those protections in a series of lawsuits filed against the board since 2023, and last week a judge in Washington, D.C., said Trump could not fire Democratic NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox. The administration appealed that ruling.

The labor board is one of several federal agencies designed to be independent from the White House but that the Trump administration has said should be under the president's direct control. The law creating the board says its five members appointed by the president can only be removed for "neglect of duty or malfeasance in office."

Until last week, the board had defended that law as necessary to maintain the independence of members, who decide cases accusing businesses of violating workers' rights to organize, join unions, and engage in collective bargaining over working conditions.

The labor board in the new court filings cited a February letter from acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris asserting that protections from removal for members of the NLRB and two other agencies with similar structures were invalid.

An NLRB spokesman declined to comment. SpaceX and lawyers for employers involved in the other cases did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump fired Wilcox in January, when the board had two vacancies, leaving it without a quorum of three members to decide even routine cases until she sued and the judge reinstated her last week.

In the SpaceX case, a federal judge in Texas last year agreed with the company that removal protections for board members and administrative judges are unlawful. The judge blocked the NLRB from pursuing an administrative case claiming that SpaceX forced employees to sign illegal severance agreements, which the company has denied.

Musk, the rocket maker's founder and CEO, is a top adviser to Trump and is spearheading an aggressive campaign to shrink the federal workforce and slash government spending.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Paul Simao)