The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Rebecca Slaughter, who served for seven years as a member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) until she received an email in March informing her of her termination due to her ideals being deemed “inconsistent with [the] administration’s priorities.”
The Trump v. Slaughter case looks at whether the Trump administration, or any future president, can dismiss a member of an independent federal agency without a specific, valid reason. But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson balked at that notion.
“[H]aving a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the Ph.Ds and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States,” said Jackson as she criticized the potential consequences of a ruling in favor of the president during oral arguments. “This is what I think Congress’s policy decision is when it says that these certain agencies we’re not going to make directly accountable to the president.”
Slaughter’s lawsuit relies on the validity of the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor v. United States decision, when the Supreme Court unanimously said Congress had the authority to limit the president’s power to remove officials from agencies that perform “quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial” functions.
Trump administration lawyers insist that presidential authority depends on the ability to fire independent officials. Solicitor General Dean John Sauer told the court that limiting the president’s authority creates a situation where government workers have power and control over individuals and businesses, and yet can’t be checked by the president. “That’s a power vacuum,” he insisted. “The president is answerable to the voters. [The independent officials] have no boss.
And regardless of what happens, when there’s a power vacuum, somebody is going to come into that power vacuum. So, is it Congress that many commentators have noted actually exercises substantial control over these independent agencies through budgetary functions and through oversight functions? …The point is that power vacuums should not exist in our constitutional structure…”
The FTC commissioner’s attorneys, meanwhile, cited the country’s long history of limiting executive power and contended that this hasn’t undermined presidential authority. “It is simply implausible to say that presidents have been supporting these traditional independent agencies now for more than a century and a half, …for the entirety of American history, presidents of the United States have been complicit in giving up a vital executive power that is, according to petitioners, indispensable to their constitutional duty,” Amit Agarwal asserted.
The conservative majority on the Supreme Court seemed ready to look at Humphrey’s Executor v. United States again and possibly throw it out. This would mean that the White House would be in charge of agency power and hiring decisions, which could have an effect on regulatory oversight and the federal workforce as a whole.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to make its ruling in the case by July 2026.
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