Trump v. Boyle

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1 Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025)
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 25A11
DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES,
ET AL. v. MARY BOYLE, ET AL.
ON APPLICATION FOR STAY
[July 23, 2025]
The application for stay presented to THE CHIEF JUSTICE
and by him referred to the Court is granted. The
application is squarely controlled by Trump v. Wilcox, 605
U. S. ___ (2025). Although our interim orders are not
conclusive as to the merits, they inform how a court should
exercise its equitable discretion in like cases. The stay we
issued in Wilcox reflected “our judgment that the
Government faces greater risk of harm from an order
allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the
executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces
from being unable to perform her statutory duty.” Ibid.
(slip op., at 1). The same is true on the facts presented here,
where the Consumer Product Safety Commission exercises
executive power in a similar manner as the National Labor
Relations Board, and the case does not otherwise differ from
Wilcox in any pertinent respect.
The June 13, 2025, order of the United States District
Court for the District of Maryland, No. 8:25–cv–01628, ECF
Doc. 25, is stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in
the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such
a writ is timely sought. Should certiorari be denied, this
stay shall terminate automatically. In the event certiorari
is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down
of the judgment of the Court.

2 TRUMP v. BOYLE
K
AVANAUGH, J., concurring
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH, concurring in the grant of the
application for stay.
I agree with the Court’s decision to grant a stay in this
case, as in Trump v. Wilcox, 605 U. S. ___ (2025). In
addition to granting a stay, I would have granted certiorari
before judgment in this case or in Wilcox.
When an emergency application turns on whether this
Court will narrow or overrule a precedent, and there is at
least a fair prospect (not certainty, but at least some
reasonable prospect) that we will do so, the better practice
often may be to both grant a stay and grant certiorari before
judgment. In those unusual circumstances, if we grant a
stay but do not also grant certiorari before judgment, we
may leave the lower courts and affected parties with
extended uncertainty and confusion about the status of the
precedent in question. Moreover, when the question is
whether to narrow or overrule one of this Court’s
precedents rather than how to resolve an open or disputed
question of federal law, further percolation in the lower
courts is not particularly useful because lower courts
cannot alter or overrule this Court’s precedents. In that
situation, the downsides of delay in definitively resolving
the status of the precedent sometimes tend to outweigh the
benefits of further lower-court consideration.
So it is here. Therefore, I not only would have granted a
stay but also would have granted certiorari before
judgment.

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1 Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025)
K
AGAN, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 25A11
DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES,
ET AL. v. MARY BOYLE, ET AL.
ON APPLICATION FOR STAY
[July 23, 2025]
JUSTICE KAGAN, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and
J
USTICE JACKSON join, dissenting from the grant of the ap-
plication for stay.
Once again, this Court uses its emergency docket to de-
stroy the independence of an independent agency, as estab-
lished by Congress. Two months ago, in Trump v. Wilcox,
the majority issued a stay allowing the President to dis-
charge, without any cause, Democratic members of the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Merit Sys-
tems Protection Board (MSPB). See 605 U. S. ___, ___
(2025) (slip op., at 1). Today, the same majority’s stay per-
mits the President to fire, again without cause, the Demo-
cratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commis-
sion (CPSC). Congress provided that the CPSC, like the
NLRB and MSPB, would operate as “a classic independent
agency—a multi-member, bipartisan commission” whose
members serve staggered terms and cannot be removed ex-
cept for good reason. Id., at ___ (K
AGAN, J., dissenting from
grant of application for stay) (slip op., at 2); see 15 U. S. C.
§2053(a) (requiring “neglect of duty or malfeasance”). In
Congress’s view, that structure would better enable the
CPSC to achieve its mission—ensuring the safety of con-
sumer products, from toys to appliances—than would a sin-
gle-party agency under the full control of a single President.
The CPSC has thus operated as an independent agency for
many decades, as the NLRB and MSPB also did. But this

2 TRUMP v. BOYLE
K
AGAN, J., dissenting
year, on its emergency docket, the majority has rescinded
that status. By allowing the President to remove Commis-
sioners for no reason other than their party affiliation, the
majority has negated Congress’s choice of agency biparti-
sanship and independence.
In doing so, the majority has also all but overturned
Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602, 626
(1935), a near-century-old precedent of this Court. As I ex-
plained in Wilcox, we held in Humphrey’s that independent
agencies like the CPSC (and NLRB and MSPB) do not vio-
late the Constitution’s separation of powers. See 605 U. S.,
at ___, ___ (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 1, 3). In creating
such “quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial bodies” to imple-
ment legislative directives, Humphrey’s explained, Con-
gress may “forbid their [members’] removal except for
cause.” 295 U. S., at 626, 629. Now, though, the opposite
rule obtains: The majority, through its stays, has prevented
Congress from prohibiting removals without cause. On the
Court’s emergency docket—which means “on a short fuse
without benefit of full briefing and oral argument”—the
majority has effectively expunged Humphrey’s from the
U. S. Reports. Doe v. Mills, 595 U. S. ___, ___ (2021)
(B
ARRETT, J., concurring in denial of application for injunc-
tive relief) (slip op., at 1).
And it has accomplished those ends with the scantiest of
explanations. The majority’s sole professed basis for today’s
stay order is its prior stay order in Wilcox. But Wilcox itself
was minimally (and, as I have previously shown, poorly) ex-
plained. See 605 U. S., at ___–___ (K
AGAN, J., dissenting)
(slip op., at 4–7). It contained one sentence (ignored today)
hinting at but not deciding the likelihood of success on the
merits, plus two more respecting the “balance [of] the equi-
ties.” Id., at ___–___ (order) (slip op., at 1–2); see id., at ___–
___ (K
AGAN, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 4–7). So only an-
other under-reasoned emergency order undergirds today’s.
Next time, though, the majority will have two (if still under-

3 Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025)
K
AGAN, J., dissenting
reasoned) orders to cite. “Truly, this is ‘turtles all the way
down.’” Rapanos v. United States, 547 U. S. 715, 754 (2006)
(plurality opinion). The majority rejects Congress’s design
of a whole class of agencies (except, as Wilcox somehow has
it, the Federal Reserve) by layering nothing on nothing.
The result—an increase of executive power at the ex-
pense of legislative authority—does not stand alone. Just
last week, this Court granted another stay allowing the
President to ignore a federal statute. That decision permit-
ted the President to push forward in dismantling the De-
partment of Education, even though Congress created that
agency and tasked it with performing vital functions. See
McMahon v. New York, 606 U. S. ___, ___ (2025)
(S
OTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 1). If the majority
had any valid basis for taking that action (relating, say, to
the breadth of the District Court’s preliminary injunction)
it did not appear on the face of the Court’s unreasoned or-
der. See id., at ___ (order) (slip op., at 1); id., at ___
(S
OTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 18). That order
simply signaled that the President could carry on, even in
the face of a conflicting statute. So too does this order, and
with the same lack of care. The majority has acted on the
emergency docket—with “little time, scant briefing, and no
argument”—to override Congress’s decisions about how to
structure administrative agencies so that they can perform
their prescribed duties. Wilcox, 605 U. S., at ___ (K
AGAN,
J., dissenting) (slip op., at 5). By means of such actions, this
Court may facilitate the permanent transfer of authority,
piece by piece by piece, from one branch of Government to
another. Respectfully, I dissent.