Myers v. United States

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Myers v. United States
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 5, 1923
Reargued April 13–14, 1925
Decided October 25, 1926
Full case nameFrank S. Myers, Administratrix v. United States
Citations272 U.S. 52 ( more )
47 S. Ct. 21; 71 L. Ed. 160; 1926 U.S. LEXIS 35
Case history
PriorAppeal from the Court of Claims
Holding
The President has the exclusive authority to remove "administrative officers" and the Take Care Clause [1] generally limits Congress from restricting this power.
Court membership
Chief Justice
William H. Taft
Associate Justices
Oliver W. Holmes Jr.  · Willis Van Devanter
James C. McReynolds  · Louis Brandeis
George Sutherland  · Pierce Butler
Edward T. Sanford  · Harlan F. Stone
Case opinions
MajorityTaft, joined by Van Devanter, Sutherland, Butler, Sanford, Stone
DissentHolmes
DissentMcReynolds
DissentBrandeis
Laws applied
U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 2

Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), was a United States Supreme Court decision ruling that the President's exclusive power to remove executive branch officials is vested in the Office of the Presidency by Article Two of the United States Constitution, and the Take Care Clause generally limits Congress from restricting this power.

Contents

Myers was the first Supreme Court case to invalidate a federal law for violating the separation of powers by allowing Congress to "participate in the exercise of [the removal power]". [2] The Taft Court's broad view of the President's "constitutional duty of seeing that the laws be faithfully executed" was limited in subsequent decisions to "purely executive" offices.

In Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020), the Supreme Court interpreted Humphrey's as recognizing an exception for independent multimember agencies, and reaffirming the core holding of Myers that the President generally has an unencumbered removal power.

Background

After decades of political controversy surrounding the tenure of political appointees, the President's power of removal was recognized as incidental to the Article II appointment power in a series of Supreme Court decisions in the late 19th-century. In Parsons v. United States (1897) the Court said the President's power to remove was implicit when a statute was silent. [3] This left open the question of whether it was constitutional for Congress to require advice and consent for a removal.

An 1876 federal law provided that "Postmasters of the first, second, and third classes shall be appointed and may be removed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate." In 1920, Frank S. Myers, a First-Class Postmaster in Portland, Oregon removed from office by President Woodrow Wilson argued that his dismissal violated this law. [4] He lost in the court of claims on the ground of laches. After Myers's death his widow continued the litigation. [5]

Supreme Court

According to Justice Pierce Butler's notes the justices conferenced Myers on April 25, 1925. The justices appear to have agreed that the case should be decided on constitutional grounds. The Court held that the statute was unconstitutional, as it violated the separation of powers between the executive and the legislative branches. [6] All told, it was one of the longest set of opinions in Supreme Court history up to that point. [7]

Majority

Chief Justice (and former President) William Howard Taft, writing for the Court, noted that the Constitution mentions the appointment of officials but is silent on their dismissal. He proceeded to conduct a voluminous examination on the history of the President's removal power.

Taft first examined the notes of the Constitutional Convention. He found that the Virginia Plan proposed to vest in the Executive "all the executive powers of the Congress under the Convention". (Before the Constitution was ratified, the powers of appointment and removal were exercised by the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation, which caused many problems.) Some of the states remained wary of proposals for a unitary executive, and would not agree to ratification unless the Appointments Clause included an advice and consent requirement. [8] [9]

Taft recognized Montesquieu as the major intellectual influence for the separation of powers principle and concluded that "the reasonable construction of the Constitution must be that the branches should be kept separate in all cases in which they were not expressly blended". [10]

Taft finally analyzed subsequent congressional debates over the issue. [11] [12] He found that the The Decision of 1789 weighed heavily in favor of an unencumbered removal power that "vested in the President alone". [13] [14] Taft also cited historical evidence about Alexander Hamilton and the Neutrality Proclamation to argue that the Take Care Clause does not restrict or limit the "Executive Power" vested in the Office of the Presidency by Article II of the United States Constitution. [15] [16]

Taft concluded that Article II "grants to the President" the "general administrative control of those executing the laws, including the power of appointment and removal of executive officers" that is needed to fulfill the Article II responsibility to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed". [17] [18]

Dissents

In a lengthy dissent, Justice McReynolds used an equally exhaustive analysis of quotes from members of the Constitutional Convention and, writing that he found no language in the Constitution or in the notes from the Convention intended to grant the President the "illimitable power" to fire every appointed official "as caprice may suggest" in the entire government, with the exception of judges. [19]

In a separate dissent, Justice Brandeis wrote that the fundamental case deciding the power of the Supreme Court, Marbury v. Madison , "assumed, as the basis of decision, that the President, acting alone, is powerless to remove an inferior civil officer appointed for a fixed term with the consent of the Senate; and that case was long regarded as so deciding." [20]

In a third dissent, Justice Holmes noted that it was within the power of Congress to abolish the position of Postmaster entirely, not to mention to set the position's pay and duties, and he had no problem believing Congress also ought to be able to set terms of the position's occupiers. [21]

Subsequent developments

In an interview with SCOTUSblog, law professor Stephen Vladeck said "there's language in Chief Justice Taft's majority opinion that for the first time opened the door to arguments that for-cause removal restrictions were generally unconstitutional." [22]

In this well-known dictum, Taft endorsed the reasoning of Shurtleff v. United States (1903), a decision in which the Court declined to restrict the President's general removal power without clear evidence of congressional intent. Faced with this question in Humphrey's Executor v. United States , Justice George Sutherland, finding that Congress had intended to create an independent agency, distinguished Shurtleff and appeared to have repuidated the Myers dictum. [23] [24]

In 1935, in Humphrey's Executor the Supreme Court upheld a statute protecting the FTC Commissioner from politically motivated removal. Recoginizing longstanding disputes over the removal power, Humphrey's distinguished executive officers from officers occupying "quasi-legislative" or "quasi-judicial" positions. The majority opinion stated that: [25]

The office of a postmaster is so essentially unlike the office now involved that the decision in the Myers case cannot be accepted as controlling our decision here. A postmaster is an executive officer restricted to the performance of executive functions. He is charged with no duty at all related to either the legislative or judicial power. The actual decision in the Myers case finds support in the theory that such an officer is merely one of the units in the executive department and, hence, inherently subject to the exclusive and illimitable power of removal by the Chief Executive whose subordinate and aid he is. Putting aside dicta [...] the necessary reach of the decision goes far enough to include all purely executive officers.

In Wiener v. United States the Court said the Humphrey's decision "narrowly confined the scope of the Myers decision". The Court seemed to have stepped back from Taft's broad view of the President's "constitutional duty of seeing that the laws be faithfully executed". [18]

Myers has regained prominence in the Roberts Court's separation of powers jurisprudence, and was described as a "landmark case" in Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB . Legal scholars have remarked that the Roberts Court does not appear inclined to limit the reach of Taft's opinion. [26] [23] Justice Elena Kagan, dissenting in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020), emphasized that Morrison v. Olson affirmed Humphrey's repudiation of the Myers dicta. [27]

References

  1. ↑ Goldsmith & Manning 2016, p. 1836-1837.
  2. ↑ "Acts of Congress Held Unconstitutional in Whole or in Part by the Supreme Court of the United States" (PDF). govinfo.gov. p. 2124.
  3. ↑ Myers 272 U.S. 52, 147 (1926); Parsons v. United States 167 U.S. 324, 330-339 (1897)
  4. ↑ Myers, 272 U.S. at 57-59.
  5. ↑ Post 2020, p. 168.
  6. ↑ Myers, 272 U.S. 52, 176 (1926)
  7. ↑ "Introduction". The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation. 1953. pp. x n.9.
  8. ↑ Myers,272 U.S. 52, 110-111 (1926)
  9. ↑ Goldsmith & Manning 2016, p. 1839.
  10. ↑ Myers, 272 U.S. 52, 116 (1926)
  11. ↑ Calabresi & Rhodes 1992, p. 1169.
  12. ↑ Goldsmith & Manning 2016, p. 1840.
  13. ↑ Myers, 272 U.S. 52, 114 (1926)
  14. ↑ Myers, at 272 U.S. 52, 166-169 (1926)
  15. ↑ Goldsmith & Manning 2016, p. 1861.
  16. ↑ Myers 272 U.S. 52, 137 (1926); See Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau , p. 25-26
  17. ↑ "Congress's Authority to Influence and Control Executive Branch Agencies". congress.gov.
  18. 1 2 Goldsmith & Manning 2016, p. 1841.
  19. ↑ Myers, 272 U.S. at 239 (McReynolds, J., dissenting).
  20. ↑ Myers, 272 U.S. at 272 (McReynolds, J., dissenting).
  21. ↑ Myers, 272 U.S. at 177 (Holmes, J., dissenting).
  22. ↑ Erskine, Ellena (April 10, 2025). "Will the court overturn a 1930s precedent to expand presidential power, again?". SCOTUSblog.
  23. 1 2 Rudinsky, Jordan. "Humphrey's Other Holding".
  24. ↑ E.g. Humphrey's Executor 295 U.S. 602, 622 (1935)
  25. ↑ Humphrey's Executor 295 U.S. 602, 627-628
  26. ↑ Mashaw, Jerry L. (August 27, 2020). "Of Angels, Pins, and For-Cause Removal: A Requiem for the Passive Virtues". The University of Chicago Law Review Online. Retrieved November 30, 2021.
  27. ↑ Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau , 545 U.S. 748 (2005)

Works cited

See also

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