The SCOTUS case that could help Trump 'fire government employees' who won’t swear total 'loyalty' to him

22 November 2023

On Wednesday, November 29, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in SEC v. Jarkesy, a case that has been making its way through the lower federal courts.

In 2022, right-wing 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judges ruled that the system the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been using to protect investors from fraud since the 1930s is unconstitutional —a ruling that was appealed. It remains to be seen whether the Roberts Court will agree or disagree with that 5th Circuit decision.

According to Vox's Ian Millhiser, the outcome of SEC v. Jarkesy — depending on how the Supreme Court justices rule — could either help or hinder former President Donald Trump's plan to pack the federal government with loyalists if he returns to the White House in January 2025.

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"None of the three rationales the Fifth Circuit offered for neutering the SEC are especially persuasive, but one of them is grounded in a pet project of the conservative Federalist Society known as the 'unitary executive' — a project for which the current Court's GOP-appointed majority has shown a great deal of sympathy," Millhiser explains in an article published on November 21. "There is a risk, in other words, that at least some of the Fifth Circuit's effort to light this decades-old agency on fire could succeed, with implications that stretch far beyond securities fraud. A sweeping decision affirming the Fifth Circuit could potentially enable former President Donald Trump to stack the federal civil service with MAGA loyalists, should he become president again."

The SEC has been around since 1934, when it was established as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 was passed by Congress in response to the Great Depression and the Wall Street meltdown of 1929, and FDR signed it into law.

SEC v. Jarkesy,Millhiser stresses, could have an impact way beyond the SEC.

"Under the strongest version of the unitary executive theory," the Vox reporter notes, "there are few, if any, limits on a president's power to fire government employees who refuse to swear personal loyalty to that president."

Read Vox's full report at this link.

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