Supreme Court won't hear Trump firing appeal
Justices declined to review former NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox's challenge to her dismissal.
AI-assisted coverage comparison, editor-supervised · How this was made
Supreme Court won't hear Trump firing appeal
Photograph: CNBC (embedded from source)
What this story says
- The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from former National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox.
- Wilcox challenged her firing by President Donald Trump, which occurred in January 2025.
- A lower court had previously ruled that Trump's dismissal of Wilcox was a valid exercise of executive authority.
- This action follows a similar Supreme Court decision in June that upheld Trump's firing of FTC member Rebecca Slaughter.
Who covered it
Percentages are shares of the 7 outlets carrying a published leaning rating. 1 of the 8 outlets we know ran this story carry no rating and are not counted in them. Coverage measured .
Trust
50/100
Craft
65/100
Hype
20/100
8 sources · methodology
Thin on the right so far
None of the 7 outlets with a published leaning rating that ran this story are rated right.
This story is still being watched, so it is a count and not yet a finding. Coverage keeps arriving for hours after an event, and a side that has published nothing this morning may publish by tonight. If it is still true when we stop checking, we will say so plainly.
The Supreme Court has refused to consider an appeal filed by Gwynne Wilcox, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board. Wilcox sought to challenge her dismissal from the board, which was carried out by President Donald Trump in January 2025. The court's decision means a lower court's ruling, which stated that Trump's firing of Wilcox was a legitimate use of presidential power, will stand.
This action by the Supreme Court mirrors a decision made in June, when the justices upheld President Trump's firing of Rebecca Slaughter, a member of the Federal Trade Commission. The court's refusal to hear Wilcox's appeal means it will not revisit the precedent set in the Slaughter case, which concerned the executive's authority over certain government appointees.
Disagreement on precedent
CNBC reported that the Supreme Court's June decision backing Trump's firing of Rebecca Slaughter overturned a 1935 precedent, Humphrey's Executor, which had recognised Congress's authority to shield leaders of some regulatory agencies from at-will presidential removal. This ruling, according to CNBC, capped a conservative effort to increase presidential control over government levers. None of the other reports mention the Humphrey's Executor precedent or the conservative push.
What the coverage left out
No reports in the provided material mentioned the specific lower court ruling that upheld a federal law protecting NLRB officials from being fired without cause, as detailed in the CNBC report. Additionally, none of the reports mentioned the 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in December 2025 that led to Wilcox's appeal to the Supreme Court. No right-rated outlet ran this story.
Still developing. We have re-checked which outlets are covering this 4 times, most recently on 19 Oct 2026, 17:15, and will add the sides that appear.
How each side covered it
Our own reading of the reporting listed below, written from the outlets’ articles rather than quoted from them. The reasoning is set out on our methodology page.
Left
4 rated outlets
- Left-rated reports highlighted that President Donald Trump fired former National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox in January 2025. These reports noted that the Supreme Court declined to hear Wilcox's appeal challenging the legality of her dismissal. Several sources mentioned that Wilcox was appointed to a second five-year term in 2023 by President Joe Biden. The CNBC report stated that Trump's move to dismiss Wilcox was part of his administration's broader efforts to reshape federal agencies and that Wilcox was the first Black woman to serve on the agency's board. The Huffington Post and Courthouse News Service reports mentioned that Wilcox sought to test the limits of a recent Supreme Court ruling on executive authority.
Centre
3 rated outlets
- Centre-rated reports focused on the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the appeal by former National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox. These reports stated that the justices turned away Wilcox's bid to challenge the legality of her firing by President Donald Trump. The WTVB report, which cited Reuters, noted that the court declined on Monday to hear the appeal. The Reuters report also mentioned that a lower court's ruling had upheld Trump's executive authority in the firing.
Right
0 rated outlets
No outlet rated right has run this story so far. We are still checking, and will say plainly if that does not change.
Questions about this coverage
- How did the left and right cover Supreme Court won't hear Trump firing appeal?
- Of the 7 outlets on this story carrying a published leaning rating, 57% are rated left, 43% are rated centre, 0% are rated right. Those percentages are shares of the rated outlets, not of every outlet that ran it, which was 8. The sections above set out what each side emphasised, in its own terms.
- Is Supreme Court won't hear Trump firing appeal left or right?
- Too few of the outlets on this story carry a published leaning rating to say. 7 of them do, and this site does not characterise a field under 12: at that size one newsroom filing moves the share by ten points. The percentages above are the count as it stands.
- Is the coverage of Supreme Court won't hear Trump firing appeal biased?
- Supreme Court won't hear Trump firing appeal is one event reported by 8 outlets, and this page does not rate the story as biased or unbiased. What it publishes is the spread: which outlets ran it, where named rating organisations place each of them on the spectrum, and what each side chose to lead with. A leaning rating describes an outlet's record over time, not this article, and the two should not be run together.
- Which side is not reporting Supreme Court won't hear Trump firing appeal?
- When we first saw this story, outlets rated right had barely covered it. Coverage accretes for hours after an event, so that is where to look rather than a verdict — the split above is the current count, and it is the one to read.
- Which outlets covered Supreme Court won't hear Trump firing appeal?
- 8 that we know of, every one of them listed further up this page with a link to its own report and to what we hold on the publisher. Nothing here is a summary of somebody else's summary: the outlets are named so the original reporting can be read.
- What did the Supreme Court decide regarding Gwynne Wilcox's appeal?
- The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Gwynne Wilcox, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board. Wilcox was challenging her firing by President Donald Trump in January 2025. The court's decision means a lower court's ruling, which affirmed Trump's executive authority in the matter, will stand.
- When was Gwynne Wilcox fired?
- Gwynne Wilcox was fired in January 2025 by President Donald Trump. She was seeking to challenge the legality of this dismissal through an appeal to the Supreme Court.
- Does this decision affect other presidential firings?
- The Supreme Court's action follows a similar decision in June that upheld President Trump's firing of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic Federal Trade Commission member. This indicates a pattern of the court upholding presidential authority in removing certain appointed officials.
Read it at the source
8 outlets, grouped by the leaning a published rating gives them. Every headline links to the original; an underlined outlet name opens our profile of that publisher.
Left
4- Supreme Court Declines to Hear Fired NLRB Member’s Appeal (opens washingtonsun.com in a new tab)
washingtonsun.com — is washingtonsun.com biased? Our profile of this outlet
- Supreme Court won't review Trump's firing of labor board member (opens CNBC in a new tab)
- U.S. Supreme Court Won't Review Trump's Firing Of Labor Board Member (opens HuffPost in a new tab)
- Labor board member fired by Trump loses out on Supreme Court review (opens Courthouse News Service in a new tab)
Courthouse News Service — is Courthouse News Service biased? Our profile of this outlet
Centre
3Right
0No outlet in this group ran the story.
Not rated
1How did this read?
About the coverage, not about the story. We do not ask whether you agree with what happened — we have no honest use for that answer.
