Myers v. United States (1926) is a landmark US Supreme Court case about who controls the removal of executive officers, and how far Congress can go in limiting the President’s power to fire officials within the executive branch - oyez.org 
# Background Frank S. Myers was appointed (with Senate confirmation) as a first-class postmaster in Portland, Oregon, for a fixed term, and he was removed before that term ended under presidential direction. Myers argued the removal was unlawful because a federal statute required Senate consent for removing certain postmasters.
The case turned into a constitutional fight about separation of powers, because the statute effectively tried to make removals a shared President–Senate act rather than a presidential function inside the executive branch - law.cornell.edu
# The Question
The core question was whether the President has the exclusive constitutional power to remove “executive officers” appointed with Senate confirmation, or whether Congress can require Senate involvement as a condition on removal - law.cornell.edu
# Holding The Court held that the statute’s requirement of Senate consent for removal was unconstitutional, and that the President holds the removal power for purely executive officers, as part of the President’s responsibility to control the execution of the laws.
# Reasoning and the Shape of the Executive Chief Justice William Howard Taft’s majority opinion argues, in effect, that you cannot hold the President accountable for law execution while also denying the President control over the people doing that execution. This opinion became one of the central pillars later cited in arguments for the Unitary Executive Theory.
# Dissents The dissents (including Holmes, Brandeis, and McReynolds) objected to the majority’s broad constitutional claims and warned against treating presidential removal as an unlimited power that Congress can rarely structure. They stressed that Congress has long shaped offices, terms, and institutional design, and that removal rules can be part of that design rather than a constitutional trespass.
# Why It Matters Now
Myers is often treated as a foundational “maximum” statement of presidential removal power, but later cases narrowed or distinguished it, especially for independent agencies and offices designed to have some insulation from direct presidential control. In constitutional argument, Myers is the big anchor point that later doctrines react to, qualify, or attempt to revive - supreme.justia.com