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A more than 90-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision that shielded heads of certain independent federal agencies from at-will removal by the president violated the Constitution, the court held in a landmark 6-3 ruling Monday.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority in Trump v. Slaughter that the high court’s 1935 decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S. was “tethered to a highly circumscribed and almost fictional view” of the Federal Trade Commission. He said the 1930s court wrongly held that, because the FTC exercised neither political nor executive power, its commissioners could be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
This longstanding precedent faced scrutiny in the years since, Roberts continued, and disagreement over the implications of Humphrey’s Executor culminated in 2025, when President Donald Trump attempted to fire agency leaders including Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic FTC commissioner. Trump gave no cause for Slaughter’s firing other than that her continued service was inconsistent with his administration’s priorities.
Slaughter challenged her removal as unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court held that she and other officials who exercise executive power on behalf of the president may be dismissed with no restrictions. This is the case even if such agencies are designated by Congress as “independent” agencies, the court said.
