Trump Purports To Fire Democratic EEOC Commissioner

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President Donald Trump fired one of the Democratic commissioners on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission late on Monday night in a move that experts said violated legal statute.

Democratic commissioner Jocelyn Samuels, whose term was supposed to end in 2026, released a statement Tuesday afternoon saying she received an email from the White House at 10:30 p.m. ET on Monday night saying she was being removed from her position, which also included a critique of her “views on DEIA initiatives and sex discrimination.”

“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,” Samuels wrote in her statement. “I deeply regret this Administration’s short-sighted and unprecedented decision to remove me from a position to which I remain committed. I am considering my legal options.”

Firing EEOC commissioners “is completely unprecedented,” David Lopez, Rutgers Law School co-dean and former EEOC general counsel, told Talking Points Memo. “It’s contrary to the statute.”

“The president does not have the power to fire a commissioner,” agreed Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president for education & workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center. The statute itself states that members of the commission are appointed by presidents and confirmed by the senate for a five-year term, and “all members of the Commission shall continue to serve until their successors are appointed and qualified.” The law was “meant to insulate the commission” from political forces, Burroughs said.

“This is a huge overreach,” Burroughs said. “It is a complete abuse of power.”

By statute the commission is supposed to be bipartisan: commissioners serve staggered, five-year terms, and no more than three members of the commission can be from the same political party, which would mean Trump would have to nominate Democratic commissioners as well as Republican ones. Even then, whoever he picked would have to be confirmed by the Senate, and “in theory it shouldn’t be a rubber stamp,” Burroughs said.

The firings came on the same day that Trump fired not just National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, as was widely expected and with precedent after Biden removed the Trump-appointed general counsel on his first day in office, but Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox. Wilcox’s term was supposed to run through August 2028, and her removal also violates precedent. She vowed to pursue “all legal avenues to challenge my removal.” The firings will likely move to the courts, where the outcome is unclear. In October, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal that sought to give the president power to fire leaders of independent federal agencies, contra a 1935 Supreme Court precedent that paved the way for job protections for those who run independent agencies. The court, per custom, made no comment when it turned the case down.

Trump has also fired at least 12 inspectors general that oversee various cabinet-level agencies, violating a law that requires a president give Congress 30 days’ notice and reasonings for the firings. He ordered a pause in all federal loans and grants, potentially running afoul of the power Congress has to appropriate spending.

Between the firings at the EEOC and NLRB, “this is a really horrible day for workers,” Lopez said.


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