Published May 23, 2025
The Supreme Court’s order yesterday in Trump v. Wilcox (which I summarized here) has one huge consequence that the dissenters failed to point out: beyond enabling President Trump to fire members of multimember commissions who have statutory protections against at-will dismissal, it effectively gives him free rein to fire a broad swath of executive-branch employees despite the civil-service protections that they theoretically enjoy.
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Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.
