Supreme Court Upholds Trump Firing of FTC Commissioner, Buries 90-Year Precedent
A Landmark 6-3 Decision on Executive Power
The Supreme Court of the United States issued a landmark 6-3 ruling Monday, June 29, upholding President Donald Trump’s dismissal of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter — and in doing so, effectively buried one of the court’s most storied precedents governing the administrative state. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts held that legal protections shielding commissioners at independent agencies from presidential removal are unconstitutional, striking a significant blow to decades of bipartisan consensus about the limits of executive authority.
The decision upended the court’s 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which had permitted such independence for multi-member bodies like the FTC, reasoning that those agencies carried out quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions beyond the direct scope of the presidency. Roberts dismissed that reasoning as increasingly obsolete in the modern regulatory landscape.
“From the start, Humphrey’s was tethered to a highly circumscribed and almost fictional view of the FTC’s role,” Roberts wrote. “If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it.” The opinion drew a sharp dissent from Justice Elena Kagan, who called the ruling a “dangerous expansion of presidential power” that would allow any future chief executive to purge independent watchdogs at will and undermine the structural checks embedded in the Constitution’s separation of powers framework.
The Fate of Lisa Cook and Ongoing Uncertainty
Monday’s ruling also carried implications for Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whose position Trump had sought to dismiss over allegations of mortgage fraud. While the court upheld the dismissal mechanism for FTC commissioners, it simultaneously declined to finalize Cook’s removal, with Roberts acknowledging that the Fed’s unique monetary role may warrant different treatment. The justices left the door open to a future carve-out for central bank officials, a concession that Democrats and financial reformers quickly argued was insufficient.
Slaughter, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, had challenged her dismissal in court, arguing that the Federal Trade Commission Act explicitly restricts presidential removal to cases involving “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” A federal district court in Washington and a circuit appeals panel both sided with Slaughter, temporarily reinstating her. But the Supreme Court’s September 2025 stay reversed those rulings and set the stage for Monday’s sweeping final word. The decision equally affects Alvaro Bedoya, a fellow Democratic FTC commissioner Trump attempted to remove alongside Slaughter, whose own case remains pending resolution in the lower courts.
“Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work,” Roberts wrote. “Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.”
What This Means for the Administrative State
The practical consequences of the ruling extend far beyond the FTC. Independent federal agencies spanning financial regulation, labor law, environmental enforcement, and consumer protection now operate under fundamentally altered legal terrain. The FTC, Securities and Exchange Commission, National Labor Relations Board, and a broad constellation of other multi-member bodies employ tens of thousands of career staff whose leadership structures have long been insulated from direct White House control. Legal scholars warned that Monday’s ruling effectively grants the presidency direct supervisory authority over all executive branch personnel — a shift that fundamentally realigns the separation of powers architecture the founders designed.
The ruling arrives as the court has now decided a series of major separation-of-powers cases this term, collectively charting a more muscular view of Article II authority. Democratic lawmakers and civil liberties groups condemned the decision as a rubber stamp for executive overreach. “The court has handed the president a get-out-of-accountability-free card,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin. “Every independent cop on the beat — the regulator, the auditor, the investigator — is now one presidential tweet away from termination.” Congressional Democrats are weighing legislative responses, though any statutory fix would face near-certain vetoes from the White House.
Looking ahead, the ruling is certain to generate fresh litigation as newly emboldened administrations seek to reshape independent agencies across government. The outcome of Bedoya’s case, pending lower-court proceedings, will serve as the first real test of how broadly the court’s majority intends to apply its reasoning. The Fed carve-out question also remains formally unresolved, with financial markets closely watching whether a future case will definitively settle the central bank’s institutional independence. Whether Congress moves to codify independent agency protections or whether Monday’s ruling represents a new constitutional baseline, the court has unmistakably shifted the balance of power toward the executive — and the political system will now have to reckon with the consequences.
