Overview

• The Supreme Court’s 6–3 unsigned order stayed Judge Matthew Maddox’s June ruling and allowed the Justice Department to remove Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr. while their legal challenge proceeds.
• The majority invoked its May emergency ruling on the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board to conclude that the CPSC’s structure did not differ in any pertinent respect from those agencies.
• With three seats vacant, the five-member commission lacks the quorum required to set product safety standards, conduct investigations or issue recalls.
• Lower courts will resume hearings after the Fourth Circuit’s earlier refusal to halt the reinstatement order, and the Supreme Court has signaled it will address the broader question of presidential removal power at a later stage.
• Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, warning that the decision erodes Congress’s design for independent agencies and shifts authority toward the executive branch.