Supreme Court expands president's power to fire officials

A divided U.S. Supreme Court expanded the president's power to fire top government officials in a blockbuster decision that puts the White House firmly in control of potentially dozens of agencies that have long operated independently. 

The 6-3 decision overturns a 1935 precedent that laid the legal groundwork for the modern administrative state. The ruling lets President Donald Trump fire Democratic Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Kelly Slaughter despite a law that says commissioners can be removed only for specified reasons.

"The FTC's for-cause removal provision violates the separation of powers," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "The FTC unquestionably exercises executive power, and must therefore be controlled by the Chief Executive, in whom such power is vested. It follows, then, that Slaughter served as the president's subordinate at the FTC — and that the president was entitled to cut her tenure short."

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority abandoned the doctrine of standing behind precedents.

"Today, this Court undoes centuries of political practice and concludes that all three branches of government have been acting in open defiance of the Constitution all this time," Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by her two liberal colleagues. "Its conclusion is wrong."

The justices said the ruling wouldn't apply to the Federal Reserve, preserving a carveout they had created on a preliminary basis in May to protect the central bank's independence. The justices separately ruled that Trump cannot immediately fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook for alleged mortgage fraud. Cook denies the allegations.

Still, the decision is likely to affect government bodies that oversee labor relations, consumer product safety, transportation safety and employment discrimination.

"I am most disappointed for our country," Slaughter said in a statement after the decision. "The consequences of this ruling will be felt by every American in both tangible and imperceptible ways."

Critics said Humphrey's Executor undermined the constitutional separation of powers by leaving powerful executive branch officials unaccountable to the president. Defenders said the Constitution gives Congress the flexibility to create agencies that rely on expert leadership and are protected from political pressures.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority had chipped away at Humphrey's Executor in recent years. The court ruled in 2020 that the president could fire the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but that decision left open the status of multimember agencies like the FTC.

Slaughter contended her removal flouted the Federal Trade Commission Act, which says a president can remove commissioners only for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." 

In seeking to invalidate that restriction, the administration said the Supreme Court didn't necessarily need to overturn Humphrey's Executor. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that the modern FTC is far more powerful than the one the court shielded from presidential control in 1935.

The ruling extends a line of major decisions from the court's conservative majority constraining the power of regulators. The court has previously slashed the power of agencies to regulate based on unclear federal statutes and curbed their authority to adjudicate complaints through in-house judges.

The case is Trump v. Slaughter, 25-332.