The United States Supreme Court has ruled that President Donald Trump has the authority to fire leaders of independent agencies or commissioners without cause, ending a 90-year court precedent meant to regulate executive power.
The ruling was made in the Trump vs. Slaughter case in a 6-3 vote.
The case was brought about due to the White House’s firing of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member Rebecca Slaughter in March, 2025. Trump fired Slaughter via email, claiming that keeping her as commissioner would be “inconsistent with the administration’s priorities” and nothing else.
Until now, a 1935 ruling known as Humphrey’s Executor has prevented the President from firing commissioners of independent regulatory agencies like the FTC.
Congress ruled that though the president does have the power to remove purely executive officers for any reason, officials of agencies whose duties “are neither political nor executive, but predominantly quasi-judicial and quasilegislative,” can only be fired for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
The FTC is an agency tasked with enforcing consumer protection and antitrust laws, and is structured with five bipartisan commissioners, no more than three of whom can belong to the same political party. Congress placed restrictions on the hiring and firing of FTC commissioners of this agency specifically in an effort to prevent partisan politics.
Upon her termination, Slaughter sued the Trump administration, claiming she was fired without cause, and a lower court ruled in her favor.
In challenging the suit, the White House argued that the court should overturn Humphrey’s Executor v United States on the grounds that the FTC wields a great deal of power over U.S. citizens and that “subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him.” The Trump administration was denied by the court of appeals when it asked to put the ruling on hold while it appealed; however, when it went on to ask the Supreme Court for a stay of the order, the court granted it.
Chief Justice John Roberts claims that “If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, the Court overrules it.”
President Trump celebrated the decision on Truth Social, posting that the “decision was long sought by the U.S. presidents, dating all the way back to the 1930s. It is such an Honor to be the sitting President who won this Historic and Unprecendented Ruling, on of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers.”
“The text of the Constitution makes clear that Congress may limit the causes for which the heads of Commissions like the FTC can be removed by the President,” says dissenting Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
“In holding otherwise, the Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws,” she adds.
In a statement, Slaughter claimed that “there are about two dozen agencies with a similar structure to the FTC, multi-member bipartisan board or commission with some form of implicit or explicit removal protections.”
“A common thread among them is that they all have some important authority in protecting market integrity, making sure economic decisions are being made without fear or favor,” she adds. “I think they are all at risk.”
One such agency, the Federal Reserve, is currently undergoing similar legal procedures to the FTC after Trump fired a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Lisa Cook, after accusing her of mortgage fraud. It is currently ruled that she is allowed to remain at her job until litigation is resolved in the lower courts.