Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Dead in the Water After Trump Fires Two Commissioners

President Trump followed up his rampage through the National Labor Relations Board (https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/01/28/trump-goes-pearl-harbor-on-the-national-labor-relations-board-fires-chairman-and-general-counsel-n2184901) by firing two Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioners and its general counsel. The newly reduced EEOC can no longer bring enforcement actions or initiate rulemaking as it doesn’t have a quorum.

Two of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s three Democratic commissioners said on Tuesday that they had been removed from their roles by President Trump in a round of late-night firings that could mark a drastic shift in the government’s approach to workers’ rights in employment discrimination disputes.

Charlotte A. Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels both said that they had been removed from their jobs late on Monday night. Their ousters may leave the agency without a quorum that would allow it to take formal actions.

The E.E.O.C’s general counsel, Karla Gilbride, was also fired on Monday night, she said in a phone interview. Kalpana Kotagal, the third Democratic commissioner, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Ms. Kotagal’s term expires in July 2027.

Their removals come during a whirlwind of actions since Mr. Trump was sworn into office on Jan. 20, with many aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the workplace, which Mr. Trump and his supporters have labeled “woke policies.”

A White House official said:

“These were far-left appointees with radical records of upending long-standing labor law, and they have no place as senior appointees in the Trump administration, which was given a mandate by the American people to undo the radical policies they created,” a White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the administration.

Under Joe Biden, the EEOC bullied companies into submitting to DEI and replacing Equality with Equity.

Much like the defenestrated acting chairman at the NLRB, the two fired Democrats were not happy about the cruel turn of fate.

In a statement, Ms. Burrows, who has retained a lawyer, called her removal unprecedented and said that she would “explore all legal options available to me.”

“Removing me, along with Commissioner Samuels, well before the expiration of our terms is unprecedented and will undermine the efforts of this independent agency to do the important work of protecting employees from discrimination, supporting employers’ compliance efforts, and expanding public awareness and understanding of federal employment laws,” she said in the statement.

Unlike the NLRB commissioner, whose firing seems questionable because the law says NLRB commissioners can only be fired for cause, the EEOC’s enabling legislation does not require that. 

The EEOC now only has two members and cannot act until President Trump nominates replacements. This is mostly a good thing.

I think there is something else going on with these firings. It seems like the Trump White House may be teeing up a challenge to a Supreme Court case.

In 2020, the CFPB was challenged for its blatantly unconstitutional structure. Under the law, it was managed by a single director who could only be removed “for cause.” The Supreme Court agreed that allowing a single individual to control an agency outside the reach of the President to remove them was unconstitutional. 

I believe the target of Trump’s removal of three commissioners, one who can only be removed for cause and two without similar protections, is to convince the Supreme Court to overturn Humphrey’s Executor vs. United States. This 1935 decision held that the President could only remove the commissioner of independent agencies for reasons established by Congress. The Selia decision established that did not apply to single commissioners; Trump wants to take a run at it to see if he can get that precedent overturned the way Chevron was reversed last summer; see BREAKING: Supreme Court Issues Monumental Ruling on Chevron Deference – RedState and The Supreme Court Firebombs the Administrative State and Tells Congress to Get Off Its Butt and Work – RedState.

We’ll see how this turns out, but even if Trump is wrong, the NLRB and EEOC will not be lumbering about the countryside and disturbing the livestock until the Supreme Court speaks.

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