The Supreme Court will not hear a challenge to the structure of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Washington – The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to the structure of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and a limit on the president’s power to remove five of its members, upholding a lower court decision that upheld that defense.

The dispute follows a 2020 Supreme Court decision. invalidation of the structure The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was run by a director who could only be removed by the president for “ineffectiveness, neglect of duty, or malfeasance.” The court’s conservative majority ruled that it violated the separation of powers and its director should be removed from office by the president at will.

It is also the latest in a series of cases questioning the power of federal agencies that the Supreme Court has tried to rein in through a series of decisions. The most important of these decisions was taken in June, when the Conservative majority overturned a 40-year-old decision that said courts must defer to the agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute enacted by Congress.

The dispute raises concerns about the separation of powers arising from the president’s ability to remove members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), an independent government agency that oversees the safety of consumer products ranging from drugs to toys to clothing.

The five-member commission has the power to ban or recall certain products, set safety standards and bring enforcement proceedings, including civil fines, against companies for violating those standards. Under the federal law that created the CPSC, commission members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate for seven-year terms. They can be removed by the president only “for neglect of duty or malfeasance.”

The Supreme Court dispute began when two advocacy groups sued the CPSC after it rejected Freedom of Information Act requests. The organizations argued that they were subject to FOIA rules administered by an agency insulated from the president and argued that their structure was unconstitutional because commissioners could only be removed for certain reasons.

The Federal District Court sided with the organizations, finding the restriction on removing commission members unconstitutional. But a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision, relying on a New Deal-era Supreme Court decision that upheld limits on the president’s power to remove members of independent agencies with multiple heads.

“We conclude that Supreme Court precedent, which still exists, supports the panel’s structure,” Judge Don Willett wrote for the divided panel. “If things were different, the FCC, NSF, SBA and dozens of other agencies would be structured unconstitutionally. The Supreme Court has not yet directly adopted this finding.”

Willett effectively called on the High Court to get involved in the dispute, writing that as “mid-level circuit judges” they must follow binding precedent even if it “strikes us as being inconsistent with the prevailing sentiment on the Supreme Court.”

The groups appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that under the separation of powers the agency could not wield significant executive power while being immune from the powers of the president.

The defense against the removal of CPSC commissioners has created an agency that “is vested with significant executive power but is completely unaccountable to the chief executive officer whose power it wields,” the organization’s lawyers wrote.

They were represented before the Supreme Court by Don McGahn, who served as White House counsel to former President Donald Trump.

“If upheld, the Fifth Circuit’s decision will further entrench an unaccountable Fourth Branch of government—one that governs Americans without answering to them,” McGahn wrote. “But the Founders did not fight the Revolution so that their descendants could live under the dictates of unelected commissioners and tenured bureaucrats.”

The Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to reject the appeal, arguing in part that advocacy groups do not have legal standing to sue (a concept known as standing) because they are not regulated by the CPSC. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the court in a statement that allowing the organizations to pursue their case would allow anyone to challenge any deletion restriction by declaring an intention to file Freedom of Information Act requests.

She also argued that Congress has repeatedly relied on a 1935 Supreme Court decision to create multi-member agencies headed by officers protected from at-will dismissal. According to the Department of Justice, examples of such agencies include the National Transportation Safety Board, the Commission on Civil Rights and the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service.