Advancing American Freedom led an amicus brief with 36 other amici in Consumers’ Research v. Consumer Product Safety Commission urging the Supreme Court to take up the case and rule in favor of Consumers’ Research, restoring the President’s constitutionally established authority over the Executive Branch.
“With its recent decision overturning Chevron, the Court rightly reasserted the constitutional authority of its own branch. In this case, it has the opportunity to do the same for the Executive Branch,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat.
“Over the last century, the powers vested by the Constitution in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government have been slowly and purposely leeched by the Progressive movement into the ‘fourth branch’ administrative state,” Wheat said. “This case will help reverse that process and restore the Constitution’s three co-equal and distinct branches in order to safeguard liberty.”
As is the case for several agencies within the administrative state, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is headed by a multimember board, the members of which are protected from presidential removal except in narrow circumstances. As a result, the Commission, which is ostensibly a part of the Executive Branch, operates beyond the control of the person vested by the Constitution with the executive power: the President.
Wheat concluded, “We urge the Supreme Court to take up this case and take another important step in the direction of restoring the balance of powers established by the Constitution.”
Read the full brief here.
