The Supreme Court just handed the Federal Reserve a shield and the SEC a target. In a 6-3 decision issued June 29-30, the court preserved the Fed’s independence from presidential removal while simultaneously stripping similar protections from other independent agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The ruling and its ‘curiously overlooked’ impact
Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor and Bloomberg columnist, published a column on August 6 arguing that the ruling’s impact on the SEC has been “curiously overlooked” amid the broader conversation about Federal Reserve independence.
“From now on, whoever is president can fire any SEC commissioner at any time, for any reason or none at all.”
That’s Feldman’s reading of the decision. The SEC was designed to operate with a degree of insulation from political pressure. Commissioners serve fixed terms precisely so they can make unpopular decisions, like enforcement actions against powerful companies, without worrying about their job security.
