Supreme Court backs Trump's FTC firing, expands presidential power

Highlights:

• Trump fired FTC member Rebecca Slaughter in March 2025
• Congress provided tenure protections for FTC members
• Trump has tested the limits of presidential power
• Court overturns 1935 Humphrey's Executor precedent

The US Supreme Court on Monday backed Donald Trump's firing of a Democratic Federal Trade Commission member, expanding his powers over the government and overturning its 1935 precedent that had recognised the authority of Congress to protect leaders of certain regulatory agencies from presidential removal at will.

The justices, in a 6-3 decision powered by the court's conservative majority, invalidated tenure protections for FTC members enacted by Congress more than a century ago. In doing so, the justices overruled the court's pivotal decision in a case called Humphrey's Executor v. United States. Trump last year dismissed the FTC's Rebecca Slaughter over policy differences.

The court, however, signalled that Monday's decision should not be seen as undermining the Federal Reserve's independence, with the justices describing the US central bank as possessing a unique historical tradition.

In another landmark ruling on Monday, the court refused to let Trump fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook as it stood firm to preserve the central bank's independence.

In the FTC case, the court ruled that removal protections for FTC members unlawfully encroached on presidential power under the US Constitution.

'THE VERY ESSENCE'

Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored a decision joined by his five fellow conservatives, said Trump's authority to dismiss Slaughter last year over policy differences "is not a close case." The court's three liberal justices dissented.

"The FTC's for-cause removal provision violates the separation of powers," Roberts wrote. "In its present form, the FTC enforces and administers some 80 statutes, which cover almost every facet of our Nation's economy. The tasks it undertakes are 'the very essence of execution of the law' — precisely the president's constitutional role."

Slaughter, appointed to her post by Democratic former President Joe Biden, was one of two Democratic FTC commissioners who Trump moved to fire in March 2025 from the consumer protection and antitrust agency. Slaughter's term was due to run until 2029.

A 1914 law passed by Congress permitted a president to remove FTC commissioners only for cause - such as inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office - but not for policy differences. Similar protections cover officials at more than two dozen other independent agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.

It was not immediately clear whether the independence of these other agencies would be stripped as a result of Monday's ruling.

While the court's majority said its decision should not be read as determining the fate of officials other than Slaughter, the liberal justices in a dissent said that the ruling had given the president "a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted."

"Put simply, today the majority reshapes our Government. Dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the president's hands," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by fellow liberal justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

TRUMP HAILS 'BIG WIN'

On social media, Trump welcomed the ruling concerning Slaughter as a "BIG WIN." Trump said the decision was "confirming Presidential Power in our Country to remove Executive Branch Officers and Agency Appointees, or Representatives, under Article II," the constitutional provision laying out presidential powers.

"This Decision was long sought by United States Presidents, dating all the way back to the 1930s," Trump wrote, calling the decision "one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers."

Slaughter, in an appearance on CNBC, said she was disappointed with the Supreme Court's ruling and "shocked when the court overturns a unanimous 91-year-old precedent that has been used to shape so much of our government institutions."

"I think why it really matters is exactly as President Trump said, it is unprecedented," Slaughter said. "And it hands a massive amount of power away from Congress and to the president to shape economic decision making in a way that will reward the rich and powerful and at the expense of ordinary Americans."

Democratic senators and antimonopoly groups voiced concern that Trump with the firings sought to eliminate the agency's scrutiny of big corporations.

Washington-based US District Judge Loren AliKhan in July 2025 blocked Trump's firing of Slaughter, rejecting his administration's argument that the tenure protections unlawfully encroached on presidential power. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit the following month in a 2-1 decision kept AliKhan's ruling in place.

But the Supreme Court in September allowed Trump's ouster of Slaughter to go into effect - an action that drew dissents from its three liberal justices - while agreeing to hear arguments in the case.

The lower courts ruled that the statutory protections shielding FTC members from being removed without cause complied with the Constitution in light of the Humphrey's Executor precedent.

The court in Humphrey's Executor rebuffed Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to fire an FTC member over policy differences despite tenure protections given by Congress.

In the 1935 decision, the court said restricting a president's removal of commissioners was lawful because the FTC performed tasks more closely resembling legislative and judicial functions rather than those belonging squarely to the executive branch, headed by the president.

The Trump administration argued that the modern FTC grew to wield substantial executive power in the decades since the Humphrey's Executor decision, draining that ruling of its force.

The arguments advanced by Justice Department lawyers representing Trump in the case embraced the "unitary executive" theory. This conservative legal doctrine sees the president as possessing sole authority over the executive branch, including the power to fire and replace heads of independent agencies at will, despite legal protections provided by Congress for these positions.

The Constitution set up a separation of powers among the US government's coequal executive, legislative and judicial branches as part of a system of checks and balances.

The Supreme Court in recent decades had narrowed the reach of Humphrey's Executor but stopped short of overturning it. In a 2020 ruling, it said the Constitution's Article II gives the president the general power to remove heads of agencies at will but that the 1935 precedent had carved out an exception that allowed for-cause removal protections for certain multi-member, expert agencies.

The Slaughter case represents the latest instance of the Supreme Court overturning one of its major precedents. For instance, the court in 2022 overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had recognised a woman's constitutional right to have an abortion, and in 2024 it overturned a 1984 precedent that had given deference to government agencies in interpreting laws they administer.