How the Trump Firing Power Supreme Court Ruling Buried a 91-Year-Old Precedent

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter spent nearly a decade as a Federal Trade Commissioner protected by a rule that dated to Franklin Roosevelt's first term. On June 29, 2026, six justices erased that protection in a single stroke, ruling that President Trump acted lawfully when he fired her without cause in March 2025. The decision in Trump v. Slaughter did more than end one commissioner's tenure. It dismantled a structural safeguard that had governed the federal bureaucracy for 91 years.

The 6-3 majority, split cleanly along ideological lines, did not merely rule against Slaughter on narrow grounds. It reached back to overturn Humphrey's Executor v. United States, the 1935 case that had allowed Congress to insulate independent agency members from being dismissed at a president's pleasure. In doing so, the Court rewrote the balance of power between the White House and the sprawling network of commissions and boards that regulate American commerce, labor, energy and safety.

The Slaughter Firing That Started the Fight

The dispute traces to March 2025, when the Trump administration removed Slaughter and fellow Democratic Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya from the FTC. Neither was accused of the misconduct that the governing statute had long required as grounds for removal. Since the commission's creation in 1914, Congress had specified that commissioners could be removed only for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office. Slaughter received no such charge. She was told instead that her continued service was inconsistent with the administration's priorities.

That justification, or the absence of one grounded in the statute, became the heart of the case. Slaughter argued that the for-cause protection Congress wrote into the FTC Act made her firing unlawful. Bedoya, also a Democrat, was part of the same underlying legal dispute. The commissioners contended that the removal restriction had been settled law for generations and that the Court had reaffirmed it repeatedly.

The administration countered that the Constitution vests executive power in the president alone, and that officials who wield that power must answer to him. The FTC, the government argued, exercises substantial executive authority through its enforcement and rulemaking. If commissioners can defy the president while remaining shielded from removal, the argument went, the president cannot faithfully execute the laws.

Trump Firing Power Supreme Court Ruling

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by the Court's five other conservative justices. His reasoning was direct: subordinates who exercise the president's power are subject to removal by him. That principle, the majority held, flows from Article II's vesting of executive power in a single chief executive who bears responsibility for the conduct of the government.

The Trump firing power Supreme Court ruling framed Humphrey's Executor as an outlier that had never fit comfortably with the Constitution's design. In the majority's telling, the 1935 decision rested on a cramped view of the FTC as a quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial body rather than an executive one. Nearly a century of agency practice, the Court reasoned, had exposed that characterization as inaccurate. Modern commissions enforce the law, and enforcement is an executive function.

By overturning the precedent outright rather than distinguishing it, the majority chose the broadest available path. The Court could have ruled for the administration on narrower terms, addressing only the FTC's particular structure. Instead it announced a general rule that reaches across the government. That choice is what gives the decision its sweep and what alarmed the dissenters.

Sotomayor's Dissent From the Bench

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the three liberal justices and took the rare step of reading a summary of her dissent aloud from the bench, a gesture reserved for cases a justice considers especially consequential or wrongly decided. She called the decision grievously wrong.

Her dissent warned that the majority had swept away a precedent that generations of Congresses had relied upon when designing independent agencies. Lawmakers built commissions with staggered terms, bipartisan membership and for-cause protections precisely to insulate technical and regulatory judgments from the shifting winds of partisan politics. Removing those protections, she argued, concentrates power in the presidency in a way the framers did not intend and the country has not experienced.

The liberal justices also objected to the majority's willingness to discard long-settled law. Overturning a 91-year-old precedent, they contended, demands a far stronger justification than the majority offered. The reliance interests were enormous, spanning the entire administrative state, and the Court brushed them aside.

The Federal Reserve Escape Hatch

In a separate but related ruling the same week, the Court blocked Trump from removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. The justices carved out an exception for the Fed, treating it as a distinct kind of entity that does not fall under the new at-will removal rule.

The distinction matters enormously for financial markets. A president able to fire the chair or governors of the central bank at will could pressure the Fed to lower interest rates for political advantage, a prospect that unsettles investors and foreign governments alike. By shielding the Fed, the Court signaled awareness of those stakes even as it stripped protection from nearly every other independent body.

Critics and legal scholars quickly noted the tension in the two rulings. If the Constitution truly requires that all officials wielding executive power answer to the president through at will removal, why should the Fed be immune? The majority's answer rested on the Fed's unique historical pedigree and its distinctive role in the economy, but the reasoning struck some observers as pragmatic rather than principled.

Agencies Facing New Uncertainty

The decision throws removal protections at numerous agencies into question. The Court did not rule on each one, but its logic extends far beyond the FTC. Legal analysts pointed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Labor Relations Board as institutions whose commissioners may now serve at the president's pleasure.

Each of these bodies was built on the same architecture that Humphrey's Executor once protected. The EEOC enforces workplace discrimination law. The NLRB adjudicates labor disputes. FERC regulates the interstate flow of electricity and natural gas. The NRC oversees the safety of the nation's nuclear plants. All were designed to operate with a measure of independence from direct White House control, and all now face the possibility that a president can reshape their membership overnight.

That prospect carries practical consequences for regulated industries. Companies plan around the expectation that agency policy will not swing violently with each election. If commissioners can be replaced at will, the composition and direction of these bodies could shift far more rapidly, injecting uncertainty into everything from energy markets to labor relations to consumer safety standards.

Trump's Reaction and an Empowered Presidency

President Trump responded publicly, saying the ruling greatly increased presidential power and that 90 years of precedent had been completely and unequivocally overruled. His framing was accurate as a matter of law. The decision hands the office a tool that presidents of both parties had lacked since the New Deal.

For the executive branch, the practical effect is immediate. A president can now assemble the leadership of most independent agencies to align with administration policy, without waiting for terms to expire or manufacturing cause. The barrier that once forced negotiation and continuity across administrations has fallen. Whoever holds the office next inherits the same expanded authority.

This ruling therefore reshapes the presidency itself, not merely the fortunes of one administration. Future occupants of the White House, Democratic and Republican, will govern with a firmer grip on the regulatory apparatus than any president since Roosevelt confronted the same limits and lost.

A Constitutional Debate Far From Settled

The ruling resolves the immediate legal question but opens a broader argument about the shape of American government. Supporters see it as a long overdue correction that restores accountability, arguing that unelected commissioners insulated from removal wielded power without answering to voters through the elected president. In their view, the decision strengthens democracy by ensuring the buck stops at the Oval Office.

Opponents see the opposite. They warn that independent agencies were designed to make decisions on technical and legal merits rather than political loyalty, and that at will removal invites presidents to demand fealty from regulators. The line between accountability and politicization, they argue, is exactly the line the Court just erased.

What is certain is that the administrative state built over the past century now rests on a different constitutional foundation. Congress may attempt to respond with new statutory designs, and future cases will test the boundaries of the Fed exception and the reach of the new rule. For now, the balance has tilted decisively toward the presidency, and a precedent that survived eighteen presidents did not survive this Court.