The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 on Monday that the President may remove members of the Federal Trade Commission over policy disagreements alone, not just for misconduct or neglect of duty. The decision, Trump v. Slaughter, overturns 90 years of precedent and reshapes the balance of power between the White House and the federal agencies long considered independent of it.
A 90-Year-Old Precedent Falls
The ruling overturns Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), a unanimous decision that had limited a president’s ability to remove officials from certain independent agencies without cause. That case arose after President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to fire an FTC commissioner over ideological disagreements; the Court held at the time that the FTC’s functions were “quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative” rather than purely executive, and so could be shielded from at-will removal.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the modern FTC bears little resemblance to the agency the Court described in 1935. He noted that the agency now enforces roughly 80 statutes touching nearly every part of the economy, and concluded that “if anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, warned that the decision hands the president “a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted.”
How the Case Reached the Court
The case centered on Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, an FTC commissioner first appointed by Trump in 2018 and later renominated by President Biden for a term set to run through 2029. Trump removed her last year, citing only that her “continued service” was inconsistent with his administration’s priorities — not any of the statutory grounds (inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance) Congress had specified. A federal district court ordered her reinstated, and an appeals court agreed, but the Supreme Court ultimately sided with the administration.
Expanded Presidential Authority
The decision significantly increases presidential control over independent executive agencies generally. Roberts wrote that officials who fall within the president’s “general administrative control” must be removable at will — a standard that extends well beyond the FTC.
Ripple Effects Across the Government
Congress has created more than two dozen multi-member agencies whose leaders previously enjoyed similar for-cause removal protections. Agencies likely affected include:
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
• Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
• Federal Election Commission (FEC)
• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
These agencies regulate areas ranging from labor disputes and workplace discrimination to product safety and the airwaves. Going forward, their commissioners can generally be removed by the president without needing to show cause.
What the Ruling Does Not Do
The decision is narrower than a blanket grant of firing power across government:
• Career civil servants are unaffected. Most federal employees remain protected under separate civil service laws; this ruling applies to presidentially appointed agency heads and board members, not the broader federal workforce.
• The Federal Reserve is carved out — for now. The Court explicitly said its reasoning does not extend to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, which keeps its existing removal protections.
• Other questions are left open. Roberts wrote that the ruling doesn’t address tenure protections for judges on the U.S. Tax Court or the Court of Federal Claims, leaving “those questions for another day.”
Reaction
President Trump called the ruling a “BIG WIN” on Truth Social, framing it as a power long sought by U.S. presidents.