WASHINGTON—Gwynne Wilcox, the outstanding African American pro-labor leader thrown off the National Labor Relations Board by Trump, thereby freezing that body into inaction, was reinstated by the courts but now Chief Justice Roberts of the Supreme Court, doing the bidding of MAGA, has kicked her off again.
Republican President Donald Trump, no fan of people of color and workers, bounced Wilcox from her National Labor Relations Board seat in late January. Wilcox, the first African-American woman and first African-American female board chair, sued to get her job back.
A week after she was canned, she won, and rejoined the board, giving it a quorum to decide disputes between bosses and workers.
Trump fired Wilcox, an illegal action under labor law, because she didn’t fit his ideology and kept ruling against big business bosses. After the lower court ruled for Wilcox, Trump took the case to the Supreme Court justices.
Chief Justice John Roberts stepped into the fray, and gave Trump yet another High Court win, at least for now. Responding favorably to Trump’s lawyers, Roberts tossed her off the board on April 9.
Wilcox could still wind up back on the NLRB, though.
The Chief Justice’s one-paragraph order on April 9 overturned all the lower court decisions. But it also said the original court order putting Wilcox back in her NLRB seat—but not the board chairwomanship —is “hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned,” meaning Roberts himself, or an order by the full Supreme Court.
“It is further ordered a response be filed on or before Tuesday, April 15th, 2025, by 5 p.m. (EDT).”
So stay tuned. The saga of whether Trump can succeed in firing Wilcox, and in the process warn the entire NLRB that it must slavishly obey his dictates, or else, continues.
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