A Democratic member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, an independent administrative agency tasked with administering “labor-management relations” for over 2 million government workers, was “unlawfully removed” by President Donald Trump last month, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Susan Tsui Grundmann, who was axed on Feb. 11, has been suing the Trump administration for what she claims was an “unconstitutional” removal from the FLRA, which is a three-member agency charged by Congress with “managing federal labor relations” in an “unbiased” and “fair” way that she says is not supposed to “shift with political whims.” With Grundmann in, the FLRA would have a 2-1 Democratic majority until her term expires in July.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan handed down her ruling in the case — siding with Grundmann and her argument that Trump’s firing of her was “unlawful” — after the Justice Department argued Article II of the Constitution gave Trump the power to remove executive branch officials without cause, including members of the FLRA.

“The Government vigorously defends Ms. Grundmann’s hasty termination on the basis that the Constitution vests the entirety of the ‘executive Power’ in the President,” Sooknanan said. “The government’s arguments paint with a broad brush and threaten to upend fundamental protections in our Constitution. But ours is not an autocracy; it is a system of checks and balances. Our Founders recognized that the concentration of power in one branch of government would spell disaster.”

An employee of the National Labor Relations Board who was fired by President Donald Trump is firing back in court with a federal lawsuit, calling her removal “unprecedented and illegal.”

Gwynne A. Wilcox called her Jan. 27 firing by late-night email a blatant violation of the National Labor Relations Act, which allows the president to remove board members only in cases of “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause,” and only after “notice and hearing,” according to the complaint.

“The President’s unprecedented removal of Ms. Wilcox defies 90 years of Supreme Court precedent that has ensured the independence of critical government agencies,” Deepak Gupta, an attorney for Wilcox, said in a statement. “Federal law is clear: The members of the National Labor Relations Board may only be removed for neglect of duty or misconduct, and only after a notice and a hearing. The President has violated the law.”

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Labor & Employment

Trump’s firing of NLRB member could lead to reconsideration of 1935 Supreme Court precedent

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 30, 2025, 12:09 pm CST

A challenge to a 1935 U.S. Supreme Court precedent could be brewing, after President Donald Trump fired a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board.

Fired board member Gwynne Wilcox has said she is “pursuing all legal avenues,” which could lead the administration to argue that Humphrey’s Executor v. United States should be overruled, report Law.com, the Volokh Conspiracy and Bloomberg Law.

The Supreme Court held in Humphrey’s Executor that Congress can prevent a president from removing without cause members of the Federal Trade Commission, a multimember independent agency.

The statute governing the NLRB says its members can be removed “upon notice and hearing, for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause.” The Trump administration has said Wilcox and NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo were fired because they were “far-left appointees with radical records of upending long-standing labor law.”

Daniel Wolff, a partner at Crowell & Moring, told Law.com that he thinks that a lawsuit by Wilcox would be “a great vehicle for reconsideration of Humphrey’s Executor.”

“There’s already several Supreme Court justices that have signaled a desire to get the right case to revisit Humphrey’s Executor,” Wolff told Law.com. “I think the day of reckoning is coming.”

The administration could also argue that Humphrey’s Executor doesn’t protect Wilcox because of structural differences between the NLRB and the FTC, said Steve Swirsky, co-chair of Epstein Becker & Green’s labor management relations practice group, in an interview with Law.com.

Members of the NLRB don’t have to be balanced along partisan lines, while the FTC can’t have more than three commissioners from the same political party on its five-member board, Swirsky said.

In tension with Humphrey’s Executor is the June 2020 decision Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, wrote Jonathan H. Adler, a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, at the Volokh Conspiracy.

The Supreme Court held in Seila Law that Congress can’t constitutionally impose a for-cause requirement for the removal of the director of the CFPB.

The high court distinguished Humphrey’s Executor, however, noting that the CFPB was headed by a single director, rather than a multimember board, and the single director had significant administrative and enforcement authority.

The administration nonetheless cited Seila Law in its letter justifying Wilcox’s firing, according to Bloomberg Law. The letter argued that NLRB members can be removed because they exercise executive power, and the board isn’t balanced along partisan lines.

Would the Supreme Court overrule Humphrey’s Executor? Administrative law professors interviewed by Bloomberg Law were divided on the likely outcome.

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Add Proud Boys member and Florida man Joseph Biggs — convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to one of the longest prison terms for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, to the growing list of felons seeking a pardon from President-elect Donald Trump.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, last year sentenced the 40-year-old Biggs to 17 years behind bars after a jury convicted him of seditious conspiracy, among other charges, in May 2023. Now his camp is hoping the prison sentence will soon end with Trump headed back to the White House.

Biggs’ attorney Norm Pattis, known for representing Alex Jones and Infowars employees, told Orlando Fox affiliate WOFL that he is writing Trump a letter urging him to give his client a pardon. Pattis said releasing Biggs from prison is in the public’s interest.

More from Law&Crime: Armed Jan. 6 rioter who chased Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up stairs found guilty

“The notion that Mr. Biggs is some sort of domestic terrorist that should sit behind bars for 17 years is a chilling message to everyone,” Pattis told the TV station. “And that is you ought not to write patriotic hyperbole and then attend a protest, because if you do, an ambitious prosecutor is going to turn your words into circumstantial evidence of intent to commit a crime. And that’s just un-American.”

Pattis told the Daytona Beach News-Journal that Biggs is “excited and hopeful about the prospects of a pardon.” As the News-Journal pointed out, Biggs was confident about receiving a pardon even before Trump’s election. He expressed that sentiment in a jailhouse interview with Infowars last year. MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” played a clip of the interview.

Oh, I know he’ll pardon us. I believe that with all my heart. You know, the thing is, is hopefully getting him, you know, for him to be able to get into the position where he can at least be, I think, on the ballot to run right ’cause … but I do believe that Donald J. Trump will pardon us and he should. We didn’t do anything. You know, we’re his supporters. We went there like he asked

Trump has said he would pardon Jan. 6 defendants but has not been specific on who among the roughly 1,500 rioters arrested would receive one. He said on his social media platform that he would pardon “many of them” but not the ones who “got out of control.”

A member of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood prison gang in California will spend the rest of his life in prison after admitting to stabbing to death an inmate for lying about being a member of the gang.

Jason “Jake” Corbett, 52, was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison for murder in aid of racketeering, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a press release.

A second co-defendant in the murder, Pat “Big Pat” Brady, 54, pleaded guilty on Jan. 3, and was sentenced to life in prison last month, prosecutors said.

A gang member learned his fate this week for shooting and killing a 14-year-old boy who he mistook for a rival during a gang war as the boy played basketball at a New York playground.

Sean Brown, 21, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the death of Aamir Griffin. Brown pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the first degree, conspiracy in the second degree, and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, prosecutors said in a news release. The manslaughter and weapon sentences are to be served consecutively, with the 30 years to be followed by five years of post-release supervision, officials said.

A member of the MS-13 gang who fled the U.S. after a quadruple murder of four men lured to a park in New York under the guise of smoking pot pleaded guilty this week to racketeering charges in the scheme that stemmed from gang disrespect on social media.

Edwin Rodriguez, 24, also known as “Manicomio,” entered his plea to the federal charges in the murders of Justin Llivicura, Michael Lopez, Jorge Tigre, and Jefferson Villalobos. Rodriguez faces up to life in prison. His sentencing was set for Sept. 18.

An Indiana militia member who calls himself “Reaper” and appeared amid rioters in a ballistics vest calling out “F— the police!” was arrested for taking part in the Capitol insurrection, authorities said.

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Trials & Litigation

Lawyer mistakenly filed ‘verbatim copy’ of opponent’s brief, leading to loss for Romantics band member

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 5, 2024, 8:20 am CST

A trial court did not abuse its discretion when it required a member of the rock band the Romantics to pay triple damages after his new attorney filed a “verbatim copy” of the opponent’s brief by mistake, the Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled.

The appeals court ruled against the Romantics guitarist Mike Skill in a lawsuit alleging that he wrongly diverted royalty payments to himself.

Law360 has coverage.

The trial judge had ordered Skill to pay triple damages of more than $232,300, as requested by the plaintiffs in their motion for summary disposition. The appeals court affirmed in a Feb. 29 unpublished opinion.

Skill co-wrote the song “What I Like About You,” according to Law360.

Skill’s lawyer intended to file an opposition to the plaintiff’s motion for summary disposition, the appeals court said. Instead, the June 2022 brief was a cut-and-paste of the plaintiff’s brief in support of summary disposition, signed by Skill’s lawyer, who was not named in the opinion.

The new attorney said a paralegal had filed the wrong brief. It was filed on the extended deadline day for a response to the summary disposition request. Skill’s lawyer tried to file an amended brief the next day, but the trial judge apparently rejected it.

The judge granted summary disposition to the two plaintiffs—a company formed to manage business affairs for the band known as Master Beat Inc. and fellow band member Walter Palamarchuk, who goes by the stage name Wally Palmar.

The trial court reasoned that it could reject the new brief and award summary disposition to the plaintiffs based on timely filings before the court. The trial judge also said evidence established Skill’s liability for conversion, breach of fiduciary duty and unjust enrichment.

Palamarchuk was president of Master Beat, and Skill was secretary-treasurer. The company had contractual agreements requiring the payment of royalties to Master Beat, which would then distribute royalties to past and present band members under various contractual agreements.

Skill thought that he was entitled to royalties without the money first passing through Master Beat, and he took steps to divert royalties to himself in late 2020, the suit alleged.

There is some evidence, the appeals court said, that Skill apparently received about $26,700 in royalties directly from Sony Music Publishing and $30,000 in royalty payments from K-Tel International before Master Beat became aware of it. The evidence, however, isn’t entirely clear from the record, the appeals court said. There is also some evidence that Skill withdrew $20,000 from a bank account belonging to Master Beat in July 2021, thinking that he was entitled to the money.

The lawyer who filed the wrong brief had taken over in May 2022 from a previous lawyer who sought to withdraw on the alleged ground that Skill had not paid his legal bills. The new lawyer blamed the filing mistake on the short time frame between the time that she came aboard and the due date for the response, on her own illness as the deadline approached, and on her paralegal’s failure to file the brief prepared by Skill’s former lawyer as instructed.

On the merits, Skill’s lawyer argued that he could not convert funds that already belonged to him.

“Under these circumstances,” the appeals court said, “defendant has not demonstrated that the trial court abused its discretion by declining to permit the filing of a corrected brief after the deadline imposed by the scheduling order had passed. … Furthermore, on the record before the trial court in light of the lack of a properly and timely filed responsive brief, the trial court did not err by granting plaintiffs’ motion for summary disposition.”