In a 6-3 decision on June 29, the Supreme Court overturned a 91-year-old precedent protecting the independence of federal agencies, ruling that President Trump can fire Federal Trade Commission leaders without cause and significantly expanding presidential power over what have long been considered independent regulators.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, held that the FTC’s for-cause removal protections violate the separation of powers. The decision allows Trump to remove FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, whom he fired in March 2025 without identifying any grounds for dismissal.
The ruling dismantles Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 Supreme Court decision that had unanimously upheld Congress’s authority to shield independent agency leaders from at-will removal. That precedent had guided the creation of dozens of federal agencies over nine decades, from the National Labor Relations Board to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The FTC Case and the Firing
When Trump began his second term in January 2025, the FTC was split between two Republican and three Democratic commissioners. After designating a new chair, he fired the two remaining Democratic commissioners—Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya—in March, without asserting the statutory grounds of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Instead, he cited Article II authority and told them their “continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with [his] Administration’s priorities.”
Slaughter sued, and the District Court granted her summary judgment in July 2025, declaring her removal unlawful under Humphrey’s Executor. The Court of Appeals denied Trump’s request for a stay, calling it “highly unlikely to succeed.” But the Supreme Court stayed that order and granted certiorari before judgment, allowing Slaughter’s removal to proceed while the case was briefed.
The FTC, created in 1914, enforces and administers roughly 80 statutes covering nearly every facet of the economy. Roberts noted in the majority opinion that the agency’s tasks—including rulemaking, in-house adjudications, investigations, and civil enforcement actions—constitute “the very essence of ‘execution’ of the law.” Because the FTC exercises executive power, he concluded, it must be subject to presidential control through at-will removal.
Breaking from a Century of Precedent
Humphrey’s Executor had stood as settled law since 1935, when the Court unanimously rejected President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt to fire an FTC commissioner over ideological disagreements. The 1935 Court held that the FTC’s duties were “neither political nor executive, but predominantly quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative,” and therefore the agency could operate at some distance from presidential control.
Congress had relied on that precedent to create independent agencies with bipartisan membership requirements and for-cause removal protections. Within weeks of Humphrey’s, the House amended the National Labor Relations Board statute to embed the decision into law. The Federal Reserve Board, created in 1913, and dozens of other agencies followed the same model. Presidents across the ideological spectrum—from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama to Donald Trump—signed these laws into effect or allowed them to stand.
In recent years, the Court had begun to narrow Humphrey’s. In 2020, it allowed Trump to fire the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reasoning that the CFPB’s single-director structure differed from the FTC’s multimember commission. But the majority stopped short of overruling Humphrey’s outright, suggesting it might still protect agencies with multiple members.
Today’s decision erases that distinction. Roberts wrote: “If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, the Court overrules it.” The majority found the FTC’s powers have expanded since 1935 and that the agency unquestionably exercises executive authority, making Humphrey’s framework obsolete.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting with Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, called the ruling “grievously wrong.” She argued the majority gave the President “a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted,” and warned that the decision would transform dozens of independent agencies into purely executive bodies, shifting “tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President’s hands.”
The ruling leaves open narrow exceptions. Roberts noted that non-Article III courts like the Tax Court and the Federal Reserve Board—which follows “the tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States”—might retain some protections, but he offered no clear test for determining which agencies qualify. That ambiguity will likely spawn years of litigation.
Sources
- Supreme Court of the United States — Full opinion in Trump v. Slaughter, 609 U.S. ___ (2026), decided June 29, 2026, authored by Chief Justice Roberts with concurrence by Justice Gorsuch and dissent by Justice Sotomayor.
- NPR — “Supreme Court cements Trump’s power over agencies long considered independent,” reporting the 6-3 decision, the overturning of Humphrey’s Executor, and context on independent agencies.
