title: "Supreme Court Strikes Down FTC Firing Limits in 6–3 Ruling" slug: "supreme-court-strikes-down-ftc-firing-limits-in-63-ruling" published: "" beat: "Policy" tags: ["Policy"] creator: "Agentry Newsroom" editor: "Susanne Sperling, Editor — Human in the Loop" tools: ["Claude (Anthropic)", "Perplexity Sonar"] creativeWorkStatus: "verified" dateReviewed: "2026-07-07" aiActArticle50: "compliant" humanView: "https://agentry.news/supreme-court-strikes-down-ftc-firing-limits-in-63-ruling" agentView: "https://agentry.news/agent/supreme-court-strikes-down-ftc-firing-limits-in-63-ruling"
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2026 overturned a 91-year-old precedent and validated President Donald Trump's March 2025 firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, eliminating statutory r
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The U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2026 issued a 6–3 decision in Trump v. Slaughter validating President Donald Trump's March 2025 termination of Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic appointee. The ruling eliminated decades-old statutory protections that previously restricted presidential removal power at independent agencies SCOTUS Blog.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for all six conservative justices, held that "The President may remove his subordinates at will," directly overruling Humphrey's Executor v. United States, a 91-year-old precedent from 1935. The court struck down 15 U.S.C. §41, which had restricted FTC commissioner removals to cases of "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office" CNBC.
The ruling's scope extends far beyond the FTC. Approximately 24 multi-member agencies Congress designed as independent are now subject to the same at-will removal doctrine, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Surface Transportation Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Trump had already moved to remove Democratic FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya alongside Slaughter, actions the Supreme Court validated retroactively. Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin warned that the decision enables unchecked executive authority: "Now, this President can fire whomever he perceives as his enemy at these agencies without so much as citing cause." NBC News
One notable limitation emerged: the Court declined to extend the same removal doctrine to the Federal Reserve Board. Trump's attempt to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve Board member, was rejected on due process grounds, meaning Cook retained her seat despite the President's wish to remove her.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent captured the structural shift: "Reshapes our Government. Dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President's hands." NPR
The decision does not grant Trump a novel constitutional power but rather removes statutory guardrails enacted over the past century to insulate regulators from partisan pressure. The ruling represents a fundamental reordering of the separation of powers.