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The Employer Handbook Blog
After Yesterday’s SCOTUS Ruling, Every Election Is an Employment Law Event
The Supreme Court just eliminated 91 years of job security for commissioners and board members at federal agencies like the EEOC and the NLRB. The practical consequences for employers are bigger than the headlines may suggest.
TL;DR: In a 6-3 decision in Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court overruled Humphrey’s Executor v. United States and held that Congress cannot limit the President’s power to remove commissioners of multi-member federal agencies that exercise executive power. The ruling directly affects the EEOC, the NLRB, and more than two dozen other independent agencies. For employers, the practical consequence is an enforcement landscape that can reset with every presidential election.
A 91-Year-Old Precedent, Gone
Yesterday the Supreme Court decided Trump v. Slaughter, scrapping a 1935 precedent that let Congress shield agency commissioners from being fired by the president at will. The vote was 6-3, with Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority.
The rule now: if an agency official falls within the President’s “general administrative control,” the president can fire them for any reason — or no reason. Statutory protections that restricted removal to cases of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” are gone. The Court didn’t mince words: “If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it.”
The case involved the FTC, but the EEOC and NLRB are squarely in the ruling’s path. The statute that created the EEOC doesn’t even have an explicit removal restriction — it just sets five-year terms — so the president’s case for firing EEOC commissioners at will is at least as strong as it was for the FTC, probably stronger. The NLRB’s statute does have a removal restriction, and yesterday’s ruling kills that too.
The EEOC Is Now a Four-Year Agency — And So Is the NLRB
The EEOC has been run by Chair Andrea Lucas since January 2025. With a Republican majority in place since October of that year, the commission has already rescinded Biden-era harassment guidance, rolled back LGBTQ+ enforcement priorities, signaled plans to narrow the scope of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), and sharpened focus on religious accommodation and “illegal”-DEI enforcement. Yesterday’s ruling means those shifts won’t be undone simply because a future president waits for commissioner terms to run out. Should a Democrat win the presidency, the new administration could fire the sitting commissioners on day one and start reshaping the agency — though unwinding regulations and reversing enforcement priorities takes longer than flipping a switch.
The same logic applies to the NLRB. The current Board has already walked back the Biden era’s joint employer standard and rescinded a raft of pro-union enforcement memos. Under yesterday’s ruling, whatever the current Board builds, a future administration can dismantle just as quickly.
That’s the part of the story getting less attention than it deserves. This ruling doesn’t just hand power to this administration. It hands the same power to every future administration. Enforcement priorities, guidance, litigation targets — all of it becomes a dial that turns with the election results.
What Durable HR Compliance Looks Like Now
The answer to enforcement whiplash isn’t to chase every agency shift. A few things hold up regardless of who controls the EEOC:
Harassment prevention built on consistent training, clear policies, and thorough investigation procedures survives scrutiny across administrations. What counts as discrimination, retaliation, or a hostile work environment is set by courts, not the EEOC.
Accommodation obligations for religion, disability, and pregnancy come from the statutes themselves — Title VII, the ADA, and the PWFA. The EEOC can rewrite its guidance, but it can’t rewrite the law. An employer who ignores or mishandles a reasonable accommodation request is still exposed, whatever the commission’s current priorities happen to be.
DEI programs built on race- or sex-based employment decisions carry legal exposure under any administration — the current EEOC is just more aggressive about pursuing them. The better question isn’t whether this EEOC’s priorities will last — they won’t — but whether any employer practices perceived as unlawful could survive an agency investigation no matter who’s in charge.
The EEOC’s priorities will keep shifting. The statutes won’t. State and local employment laws add another layer that no administration can touch. Build your compliance program around what the law requires, not around what the current commission happens to be emphasizing.