US supreme court rules Trump can fire leaders of independent agencies

Rebecca Slaughter in Washington DC on 13 July 2023. Photograph: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenRebecca Slaughter in Washington DC on 13 July 2023. Photograph: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesUS supreme courtUS supreme court rules Trump can fire leaders of independent agenciesCase focused on White House’s March 2025 firing of Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter

The US supreme court has ruled that Donald Trump can fire leaders of independent agencies or commissions, ending 90 years of court precedent that curbs executive power.

The vote in the case of Trump v Slaughter is 6-3, with dissents from Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan.

The case was focused on the White House’s March 2025 firing of the Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter. Trump fired Slaughter over email, telling her that keeping her as a commissioner would be “inconsistent with [the] administration’s priorities”.

Upon her termination, Slaughter sued the Trump administration, saying she was fired without cause, and a lower court ruled for her reinstatement.

In challenging Slaughter’s suit, the White House argued the court should overturn Humphrey’s Executor v United States, a landmark ruling from 1935 in which the supreme court ruled that the president unlawfully fired a member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), limiting the president’s power over independent agencies.

“I think by our best count, there are about two dozen agencies with a similar structure to the FTC, multi-member bipartisan board or commission with some form of implicit or explicit removal protection, and a common thread among them is that they all have some important authority in protecting market integrity, making sure economic decisions are being made without fear or favor, and I think they are all at risk,” Slaughter said during a press call on the decision on Monday.

Slaughter noted that the supreme court also ruled on Monday to block Trump’s move to fire the Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.

Slaughter added it was “very difficult for me to reconcile Cook and Slaughter decisions in that somehow Wall Street is special and gets special treatment”.

“Today, this Court undoes centuries of political practice and concludes that all three branches of Government have been acting in open defiance of the Constitution all this time. Its conclusion is wrong,” wrote Sotomayor in her dissent, joined by Kagan and Jackson.

“The text of the Constitution, along with its history, the longstanding practices of the political branches, and the precedents of this Court, make clear that Congress may limit the causes for which the heads of Commissions like the FTC can be removed by the President,” they continued. “In holding otherwise, the Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”

The FTC is tasked with enforcing consumer protection and anti-trust laws. The agency is structured with five bipartisan commissioners, and no more than three can come from the same party. Congress placed restrictions on the hiring and firing of commissioners in an effort to insulate the agency from partisan politics. The Trump administration asked the court of appeals to put the ruling on hold while it appealed, but was denied.