Supreme Court gives Trump power to fire FTC commissioners at will

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Donald J. Trump could fire Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter without showing statutory cause, ending a 90-year protection for some independent agency officials. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the FTC’s removal shield violated the Constitution’s separation of powers and overturned Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the 1935 decision that had upheld Congress’s power to limit presidential removal of certain FTC commissioners.

The FTC is a five-member commission with seven-year terms, and no more than three commissioners may belong to the same political party. Trump fired Slaughter and fellow Democratic commissioner Alvaro Bedoya in March 2025, soon after beginning his second term in January 2025, saying their continued service was inconsistent with his administration’s priorities and invoking Article II authority. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia blocked interference with Slaughter’s duties before the Supreme Court took the case.

The court first put Slaughter’s firing on hold in September 2025, then granted certiorari before judgment and heard argument on December 8, 2025. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented in a 49-page opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, while Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote separately in concurrence.

Roughly two dozen multi-member agencies Congress designed to be independent now face a stronger claim of direct presidential control, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, all of which had already been pulled into removal fights at the court’s emergency docket. At the same time, the justices drew a line around the Federal Reserve in a separate firing dispute.