The Supreme Court ruled Monday that President Trump acted lawfully when he fired two Democratic Federal Trade Commission commissioners last year, handing the administration a sweeping victory that dismantles nearly a century of limits on presidential removal power.
Chief Justice John Roberts authored the 6-3 majority opinion in Trump v. Slaughter, finding unconstitutional the statutory protection that had prevented presidents from dismissing independent agency commissioners except “for cause.”
The ruling overturns Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the 1935 Supreme Court decision that gave Congress the authority to shield independent agency board members from arbitrary presidential removal.
Trump fired FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter and fellow Democratic Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya in March 2025, citing their service as “inconsistent with this Administration’s priorities.” Slaughter, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), sued, arguing the firings violated the Federal Trade Commission Act.
A federal district court and an appeals court panel both ruled in Slaughter’s favor. The Supreme Court stayed those lower court decisions in September 2025, allowing her removal to remain in place while the case proceeded.
Roberts, writing for the majority, addressed the core precedent directly. He noted that Humphrey’s Executor was decided at a time when the FTC held “very little, if any, executive power” compared to the agency’s current scope and authority.
“The sheer amount of cash, combined with the nature and timing of government activity, is eye-catching,” Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, said in July 2025 when the probe into the commissioners began drawing attention. “It’s past time for this cash flow to fall under intense scrutiny.”
The six conservative justices voted together in the majority. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.
The decision has broad implications for how the White House can manage dozens of independent federal agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Commissioners and board members at those agencies have long operated under similar removal protections.
Conservative legal scholars had argued for years that Humphrey’s Executor created a class of unelected officials insulated from democratic accountability, in conflict with the president’s Article II powers under the Constitution.
The ruling comes on the final day of the Supreme Court’s current term, alongside a string of other significant separation of powers decisions, and represents the most direct challenge to the structure of the administrative state the Court has issued in decades.
