The Supreme Court just handed the president a new lever of power over federal regulators, and the crypto industry should be paying very close attention.
In a 6-3 decision issued June 29, the Court ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that the president can fire FTC commissioners at will, stripping away the “for cause” protections that have shielded independent agency leaders from political removal since 1935. Chief Justice John Roberts authored the opinion, which effectively overturns Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a precedent that has anchored the independence of regulatory agencies for nearly 91 years.
The immediate effect: President Trump’s March 2025 dismissals of Democratic FTC commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya were upheld as constitutional.
Why crypto investors should care about an FTC case
The FTC is not the primary regulator of digital assets. But the legal architecture that protected FTC commissioners from at-will removal is the same architecture protecting leaders at the SEC and the CFTC. Both the SEC and CFTC operate under similar for-cause dismissal protections. The Court’s reasoning in Trump v. Slaughter emphasizes that direct presidential control over executive functions of regulatory agencies is constitutionally necessary.
