WASHINGTON — President Trump acted lawfully when he fired former Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter last year, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, finding legal protections against such dismissals unconstitutional.
Chief Justice John Roberts authored the 6-3 opinion that overturned precedents restricting presidents from removing officials at independent government agencies without cause.
“Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work,” Roberts wrote.
“Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.”
Trump had moved to fire both Slaughter, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and her fellow Democratic commissioner Alvaro Bedoya in March of last year, with the White House arguing their continued service was “inconsistent with [the] Administration’s priorities.”
Slaughter sued, arguing the administration had flouted the Federal Trade Commission Act, which states that the president may only remove commissioners for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
A DC federal judge and appeals court panel ruled that Slaughter was wrongly fired, but the Supreme Court stayed those decisions in September 2025.
Roberts stressed in the majority opinion that Article II of the Constitution vests “executive power” in the presidency. He also noted that ever since the American founding, executive officials “were subject to the President’s superintendence” and therefore, “had to be removable by him at will.”
The Supreme Court’s 1926 decision in Myers v. United States found that the president alone has the power to remove appointed officers.
But nine years later, the justices carved out exemption for the FTC in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which has been followed in determining the makeup of other independent agenices.
Humphrey’s Executor has since been attacked by conservative legal analysts who argued that it unconstitutionally infringed on the president’s Article II powers and created an unaccountable administrative state.
During oral arguments, Roberts raised a more practical point: That Humphrey’s Executor concerned “an agency that had very little, if any, executive power” compared to its current status. Roberts had also suggested Humphrey’s was “just a dried husk of whatever people used to think it was.” “While Myers was perhaps our best word on the subject, it was not our last,” Roberts wrote Monday. “From the start, Humphrey’s was tethered to a highly circumscribed and almost fictional view of the FTC’s role.”
“If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it.”
Roberts caveated that the Federal Reserve may warrant an exception to the opinion and that the president may be restricted from firing key officials at the central bank.
Also Monday, the high court rejected a request to quash a lower court order blocking Trump’s attempt to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud.
“We have left open the possibility that some functions traditionally handled outside the Executive Branch may not be encompassed by Myers’s general rule,” Roberts wrote.
“And one example we have given of an entity that may have such a unique role is the Federal Reserve, to the extent that it follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States—both of which influenced monetary policy and neither of which were subject to plenary Presidential control.”
Roberts and Republican-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh were the only two justices in the majority for both the Cook and Slaughter cases.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned the main dissent, joined by fellow liberals Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“Congress and more than a dozen Presidents have relied on Humphrey’s to construct a workable Government, creating many other agencies in the FTC’s tradition,” Sotomayor wrote. “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. Its conclusion is wrong.”
Sotomayor also slammed the potential carveout for the Federal Reserve, arguing that there are “workability problems” that raise the quesiton of “how close is close enough” for a historical analog to warrant an exception.
“Today, the majority replaces 90 years of proven, workable practice with a half-baked theory of executive power that is simultaneously all-encompassing yet also subject to necessary but undefined exceptions,” she chided.
During Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court has given the president a string of temporary wins on its motions docket for many cases involving his attempts to fire high-level government officials. Those temporary decisions usually aren’t explained. But the high court’s Monday decision sheds light on the rationale.
“BIG WIN just moments ago at the Supreme Court, in the Slaughter Case, confirming Presidential Power in our Country to remove Executive Branch Officers and Agency Appointees, or Representatives, under Article II,” Trump thundered on Truth Social. “This Decision was long sought by United States Presidents, dating all the way back to the 1930s.”
Trump later deemed it “the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years,” adding: “Such a Monumental Ruling at such an important time!”
