Listen Live: Supreme Court hears arguments in major case over presidential firing power
Washington — The Supreme Court is hearing a major legal battle Monday involving President Trump's move to oust a member of the Federal Trade Commission, a case that could expand presidential power over independent agencies that Congress has sought to insulate from political pressure.
The dispute stems from Mr. Trump's attempt to remove Rebecca Kelly Slaughter from her position at the FTC without cause despite a federal law that allows a president to fire a commissioner only for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.
Now, the Supreme Court is weighing the constitutionality of those removal protections. Also hanging in the balance is a landmark 1935 decision that has allowed Congress to shield members of independent agencies from being removed at will.
The court case, known as Trump v. Slaughter, is the culmination of a yearslong weakening of that New Deal-era ruling in the case Humphrey's Executor v. United States. In a string of recent decisions, the Supreme Court's conservative justices have chipped away at that precedent. Most recently, the high court invalidated removal protections for leaders of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2020 and the Federal Housing Finance Agency in 2021.
But the dispute over Mr. Trump's firing of Slaughter now gives the Supreme Court the opportunity to overturn that 90-year-old precedent entirely. A ruling in the president's favor could have significant ramifications for the structure of the federal government and curtail Congress' power to impose limits on the president's removal power.
Since he returned to the White House for a second term, Mr. Trump has pushed the bounds of presidential power and moved to oust a host of Democratic-appointed members of independent boards and commissions, including Slaughter.
Appointed to the FTC by Mr. Trump in his first term and reappointed by former President Joe Biden, Slaughter received an email in March with a message from the president informing her that her "continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my Administration's priorities."
Slaughter, like many other agency leaders fired by Mr. Trump, filed a lawsuit arguing that her firing was illegal. When Congress established the FTC in 1914, it said commissioners could be removed only for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office. Lawyers argue that Mr. Trump violated that law and Supreme Court precedent with the firing of Slaughter and a second commissioner, Alvaro M. Bedoya.
A federal district court sided with Slaughter and ordered her to be reinstated to her job at the FTC. But soon after, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a temporary order allowing her removal. Weeks later, the appeals court said Slaughter should be reinstated to her role at the FTC once again.
The Supreme Court agreed in late September to hear the case and allowed Mr. Trump to fire Slaughter while it considers the constitutionality of removal protections for members of the FTC.
The Trump administration argued in filings that the Constitution vests all executive power in the president and therefore grants him "illimitable" authority over officers who wield that power on his behalf. Removal protections for members of independent agencies leave the president "saddled with subordinate officers" who prevent him from ensuring that the laws are faithfully executed, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote.
While Congress' power to structure the executive branch allows it to establish and organize departments under the president, it does not allow lawmakers "to establish a Fourth Branch that siphons executive power away from the chief executive's control," Sauer wrote.
Congress has created more than two dozen independent agencies with removal protections that seek to shield their members from political pressure.
In its 1935 decision in Humphrey's Executor, the Supreme Court recognized an exception to the president's removal power and said Congress could impose removal restrictions for multimember agencies with quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial powers, like the FTC.
But the Trump administration argued that since 1935, the FTC has accumulated executive powers. Today, the commission executes more than 80 federal laws and regulates a broad range of matters, from meat products to contact lenses to credit cards, Sauer wrote in a filing with the Supreme Court.
"The notion that some agencies that exercise executive power can be sequestered from presidential control seriously offends the Constitution's structure and the liberties that the separation of powers protects," he said.
But lawyers for Slaughter warned that a decision overturning Humphrey's Executor would have broad impacts and destabilize institutions that have been woven into the fabric of U.S. governance.
"Multimember independent agencies are deeply ingrained in our Nation's history and tradition, from the First Congress to the present day," they said in a filing. "That history confirms that they are fully compatible with our Constitution's text and structure."
Slaughter's legal team argued that the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to transfer new powers to the president that Congress chose not to give him and wants courts to "jettison longstanding laws enacted by the people's elected representatives."
They also said the current structure of multimember independent agencies — composed of members from both parties who serve for staggered terms and are insulated from political shifts — leads to "more modest actions" and therefore protects individual liberty better than an agency helmed by a single person.
Plus, even with protections in place for leaders of independent agencies, presidents can still exert influence over those entities through the candidates they nominate and the chair they select, as well as through recommending or vetoing spending bills that affect agency operations, Slaughter's lawyers said.
More than 200 Democrats in Congress argued that multimember boards that are protected from at-will removal represent a longstanding compromise between the legislative and executive branches that should not be upset by the judicial branch. They wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief that over the past 100 years, 15 different presidents from both parties have signed bills into law that created independent agencies.
Still, Mr. Trump has already seen some success at the Supreme Court in his bid to assert more control over these bodies. The high court's conservative majority has allowed the president to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board, Merit Systems Protection Board and Consumer Product Safety Commission without cause while legal challenges to their removals moved forward.
The president has also attempted to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Lisa Cook. But the Supreme Court has so far allowed her to remain in her role, and the justices will hear arguments in that case next month.