Hold onto your hats, folks—the Supreme Court seems poised to hand President Donald Trump a major win in a battle over firing a Federal Trade Commission member without cause, potentially shaking up nearly a century of legal tradition.
In a nutshell, the high court’s conservative majority appears ready to back Trump’s removal of former FTC member Rebecca Slaughter, a decision that could weaken a 90-year-old precedent protecting independent federal agencies from presidential whims, Fox News reported.
This saga kicked off in March when Trump dismissed Slaughter from the FTC, prompting her to sue and challenge the firing based on a 1935 ruling known as Humphrey’s Executor.
That old decision holds that certain agency heads can only be removed for specific reasons like inefficiency or misconduct, not just because a president feels like cleaning house.
Slaughter’s legal team argues that tossing this protection could jeopardize not just the FTC but all multi-member agencies crafted by Congress, putting countless civil servants at risk.
By July, a federal judge sided with Slaughter and ordered her reinstatement, but the Supreme Court hit pause on that ruling in September, letting her dismissal stand for now.
Fast forward to Monday, when the justices—sporting a 6-3 conservative edge—heard nearly three hours of arguments in the case, Trump v. Slaughter, and boy, did the sparks fly.
Most of the conservative justices seemed dubious about Congress having the power to shield agency leaders from a president’s axe, with some, like Justice Neil Gorsuch, openly questioning the logic behind the 1935 precedent.
Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out how the FTC’s role has evolved since then, musing whether the original reasoning for Humphrey’s Executor even applies today.
Meanwhile, the liberal justices weren’t shy about their worries, cautioning that gutting this protection could hand presidents unchecked power over federal agencies and upend government structure.
Justice Elena Kagan warned, “Once you’re down this road, it’s a little bit hard to see how you stop,” arguing that Congress designed these agencies to operate free from total presidential control.
She added that stripping away such independence risks creating “massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the president”—a zinger that cuts to the heart of this debate.
On the other side, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, representing Trump’s administration, didn’t hold back, calling Humphrey’s Executor an “indefensible outlier” and a “decaying husk” of a ruling that’s outlived its usefulness.
Sauer’s argument that shielding agencies from presidential oversight clashes with the Constitution’s framework might resonate with conservatives itching to restore executive authority, though it’s a tough pill for those who value bureaucratic balance.
With a ruling expected by June, and another case involving Trump’s attempted firing of a Federal Reserve governor looming in January, the stakes couldn’t be higher—overturning this precedent could ripple across agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and beyond, reshaping how power flows in Washington.
