Judges restores Harris to Merit Systems Protection Board

 https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2025cv0412-40

An important thrust of today's right wing legal academics and judges is to vindicate the theory commonly referred to as the unitary executive.  It is an attack on the power of Congress.  We can stroll through the classic documents of the American war of independence and the foundation of the United States of Americ and find a trove of denunciation of monarchic authority.  And celebration of states rights to enslave.

But the modern "conservative" movement is a celebrant of executive power.  One strain of this is the assertion of Presidential power to hire and fire.  This view - of which John Roberts is an exponent - views the entire Executive Branch as fingers on the President's hands.

Seila Law - a law firm resisted a subpoena by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Despite its single director structure and  limitation of discharge power to good cause was attacked as an intrustion on Presidential power . Roberts explained that "[t]he Director possesses significant administrative and enforcement authority, including the power to seek daunting monetary penalties against private parties in federal court—a quintessentially executive power". The high court rejected Congress limitation of Presidential power, to discharg eonly for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” 12 U. S. C. §5491(c)(3)

The Clerk of the Supreme Court in the Seila Law decision summarizes the theory this way:

Article II vests the entire “executive Power” in the President alone, but the Constitution presumes that lesser executive officers will assist the President in discharging his duties. The President’s executive power generally includes the power to supervise—and, if necessary, remove—those who exercise the President’s authority on his behalf. The President’s removal power has long been confirmed by history and precedent. It was recognized by the First Congress in 1789, confirmed by this Court in Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52, and reiterated in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U. S. 477 [2010]. 

But "[i]n Free Enterprise Fund, the Court recognized that it had previously upheld certain congressional limits on the President’s removal power. But the Court declined to extend those limits to “a new situation not yet encountered by the Court.” 561 U. S., at 483. Free Enterprise Fund left in place only two exceptions to the President’s unrestricted removal power.

One of those exceptions was the  

Free Enterprise Fund left in place only two exceptions to the President’s unrestricted removal power. First, Humphrey’s Executor permitted Congress to give for-cause removal protection to a multimember body of experts who were balanced along partisan lines, appointed to staggered terms, performed only “quasi-legislative” and “quasi-judicial functions,” and were said not to exercise any executive power