Justice Elena Kagan warns Supreme Court just “all but overturned” 90-year precedent

Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissenting opinion issued Wednesday as the Supreme Court’s conservative majority allowed President Donald Trump to remove Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

The three Democrats had previously been fired by Trump but were then reinstated by a federal judge. Following that decision, the Justice Department filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.

Kagan, whose dissent was joined by fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, rebuked the move and said the Supreme Court decision nearly overturned a precedent established 90 years ago.

“In doing so, the majority has also all but overturned Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602, 626 (1935), a near-century-old precedent of this Court. As I explained in Wilcox, we held in Humphrey’s that independent agencies like the CPSC (and NLRB and MSPB) do not violate the Constitution’s separation of powers,” Kagan wrote.

This is a developing story and will be updated with additional information.