Have you ever watched a chess game where one player suddenly realizes they can move a piece everyone thought was locked in place for decades? That’s exactly what happened on December 5, 2025, when a federal appeals court in Washington dropped a decision that feels less like a legal ruling and more like someone quietly rewriting the rules of American labor law while most of us were decorating for the holidays.
A three-judge panel just handed President Trump something his first administration fought years to achieve: the unrestricted ability to remove members of the National Labor Relations Board whenever he wants, for any reason or no reason at all. And they threw in the Merit Systems Protection Board for good measure. If you’re wondering why this matters to anyone who isn’t a labor lawyer or a union boss, stick with me. This isn’t just inside-baseball stuff. It’s about who really controls the rules where you work.
A Quiet Revolution in Executive Power
Let’s start with the basics, because honestly, most people—including a lot of people who work in Washington—don’t fully grasp how big this is.
The National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB as everyone calls it, is the referee for pretty much every private-sector workplace fight in America that involves unions or basic worker rights. Can your boss fire you for trying to organize a union? Can they ban you from talking about wages with coworkers? Can they force you into mandatory anti-union meetings? The five people sitting on that board get the final say on questions like these.
Up until today, the conventional wisdom—backed by decades of court precedent—was that the president couldn’t just wake up one morning and decide to clean house at the NLRB. Those members served fixed terms, and they could only be removed “for cause”—think negligence, malfeasance, that sort of thing. The whole point was to keep politics out of day-to-day labor enforcement.
Well, scratch that.
What the Court Actually Said
The D.C. Circuit’s decision is remarkably straightforward. The judges looked at the Supreme Court’s recent string of rulings expanding presidential control over the administrative state—think Seila Law in 2020, the CFPB case, the Collins case about FHFA—and basically said: yeah, the NLRB fits the same pattern.
The President’s authority to remove officers he appoints is a core component of executive power. Restrictions on that authority must be carefully scrutinized.
Translation: if the NLRB exercises significant executive power (and it absolutely does—issuing rulings, ordering companies to rehire fired workers with backpay, etc.), then its members serve at the pleasure of the president. Period.
The Merit Systems Protection Board got swept up in the same logic. That’s the body that protects federal employees from wrongful termination or retaliation. Same principle: if they’re exercising executive power, the president should be able to fire them.
Why This Feels Like Déjà Vu
Long-time observers will remember that Trump’s first term saw a running battle over exactly this issue. In 2020, he tried to fire an NLRB member named Gwynne Wilcox (or at least demote her in a way that would force her off the board). Lower courts blocked him. The Biden administration defended those restrictions. Now a different panel of judges—looking at the same statutes but through the lens of a very different Supreme Court—has come to the opposite conclusion.
In my view, the writing was on the wall once the current Supreme Court started dismantling the idea that independent agencies could be fully shielded from presidential control. This decision feels inevitable in retrospect, even if it’s seismic in practice.
What Happens Next in the Workplace
Here’s where it gets real for regular people.
Imagine you’re trying to organize your workplace. Maybe you work at a warehouse, a tech company, a hospital—doesn’t matter. The current NLRB has been unusually friendly to workers over the past four years. They’ve issued decisions making it easier to organize, harder for companies to gerrymander bargaining units, and generally more aggressive about protecting basic rights.
- Companies can no longer force employees to attend “captive audience” anti-union meetings without risking an unfair labor practice charge
- Employers have to bargain over changes even before a first contract is signed in many cases
- The board revived the Joy Silk doctrine, which can force employers to recognize unions without an election if they’ve committed serious violations
All of those decisions could be reversed—or at least frozen—within months if new board members are appointed who see things differently.
And now the president has the power to make that happen quickly.
The Political Calculus
Let’s be honest: this ruling lands at a moment when unions are already nervous. Union membership is near historic lows in the private sector, but public approval of unions is at levels not seen since the 1960s. Organizing campaigns at major employers have had some high-profile wins recently. The labor movement was hoping the NLRB would continue providing tailwinds.
Instead, the board could flip almost overnight.
There’s a scenario where, by spring 2026, every single member of the NLRB was appointed by Donald Trump. That hasn’t happened since… well, ever, I think. Even during periods of unified Republican control, the staggered terms and for-cause protections meant changes happened gradually.
Not anymore.
The Bigger Constitutional Picture
Step back for a second and you see this ruling as part of a thirty-year trend that’s now accelerating rapidly.
Back in 1935, when the NLRB was created, the idea of independent agencies made sense in a world where Congress thought expertise should be insulated from politics. The Humphrey’s Executor case famously allowed FDR to be constrained in firing an FTC commissioner.
But the current Supreme Court has been chipping away at that precedent for years. They’ve made clear they see the president as the sole head of the executive branch, and any limit on removal power has to be narrowly justified.
Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.
