Supreme Court Overturns 1935 Precedent, Lets Trump Remove FTC Commissioner At Will

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld state laws that count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, while also issuing a separate 6-3 ruling that expanded President Donald Trump’s authority to remove independent agency leaders by overturning a 1935 precedent.

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93.3 The Drive

In the case Trump v. Slaughter, Chief Justice John Roberts led a majority that reversed Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which had allowed Congress to restrict the president’s authority to fire agency heads to ensure their independence.

93.3 The Drive

Roberts wrote that “If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it,” as the court held that “the President may remove his subordinates at will,” ending “for cause” removal protections imposed by Congress at the Federal Trade Commission.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered an oral dissent, warning that “the Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown,” and that the decision would “elevat[e] him above his once-coequal branches.”

Roberts’ majority framed the ruling around constitutional structure, writing “Our Constitution creates three branches, but only one President,” and adding that the president “is vested with ‘the executive Power’ of the United States.”

Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, argued the decision endorses a theory of “total executive control,” writing “The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before.”

ABC News

SCOTUSblog described the decision as a major victory for proponents of the “unitary executive” theory and quoted Roberts saying, “Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him.”

In the same reporting, SCOTUSblog said Sotomayor penned a 49-page dissent concluding, “the Court discards” the “democratic regime” created by the Constitution “in favor of one that distorts the structure of Government.”

While the court expanded presidential firing power over the FTC, it also carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve in a separate ruling, refusing on Monday to let Trump fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook for now in a 5-4 decision.

“Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission are unconstitutional and overturned a 90-year-old decision that allowed Congress to shield members of certain independent agencies from being fired by the president at will”

CBS News

Reuters reported that the court blocked Trump from removing Cook “for now,” with Chief Justice John Roberts saying Trump had “failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which she was entitled by statute.”

The Supreme Court’s Monday actions also left the Fed’s independence “intact — for now,” as NPR reported, and it said the court ruled 5-4 that Cook “can remain in her job until litigation is resolved in the lower courts.”

NPR further said Congress created the FTC in 1914 with commissioners removable only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office,” and that the ruling effectively ended those “for cause” limits for the FTC’s multimember structure.