Supreme Court allows Trump to fire FTC member, major win for presidential power
The ruling allowing President Donald Trump to fire FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter overturns a key precedent known as "Humphrey’s Executor."
Lynk
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that President Donald Trump did have the authority to fire Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter.
The 6-3 ruling gives Trump and future presidents the power to remove members of supposedly independent federal agencies that carry out functions under the executive branch of government.
The majority, comprised of all six conservative justices, found that the FTC's provision that commissioners could be removed by a president only for cause "is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution."
"Independent agencies are not so independent after all," conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a concurring opinion to the majority decision.
The ruling effectively overturns a key Supreme Court precedent known as "Humphrey's Executor," which had served as a protection for members of independent agencies from firing by a president.
Rebecca Slaughter, commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
"The President may remove his subordinates at will," Chief Justice John Roberts said in the majority opinion that he authored.
"The FTC unquestionably exercises executive power, and must therefore be controlled by the Chief Executive," Roberts said.
But the chief justice also pointedly carved out a possible exemption for members of the Federal Reserve from being fired by a president.
Trump last year tried to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. But the Supreme Court in a separate ruling on Monday said she could remain on the job pending the outcome of her lawsuit challenging her termination, which will play out in a federal district court.
The Supreme Court did not rule on whether has the power to fire Cook or any other Fed board member.
"Our opinion [in Slaughter's case] today should not be read" as affecting the structure of the Federal Reserve, Roberts wrote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal justice, blasted the ruling in a scathing dissent, saying that, "perhaps worst of all, the Court today forgets its place," and that "the majority reshapes our Government."
"Today, this Court undoes centuries of political practice," Sotomayor wrote.
"The Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted," she wrote "This case should have begun and ended with this Court's unanimous decision from almost a century ago: Humphrey's Executor."
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