Background
The Federal Trade Commission was created by Congress in 1914 and has since accumulated sweeping rulemaking, enforcement, and adjudicatory authority over nearly every sector of the national economy. Under 15 U.S.C. §41, FTC Commissioners serve seven-year terms and may be removed by the President only “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Shortly after beginning his second term, President Trump fired the FTC’s two remaining Democratic Commissioners, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, without alleging any statutory cause. He told them their “continued service on the FTC [was] inconsistent with [his] Administration’s priorities” and cited his Article II authority.
Slaughter sued, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to restore her to office, arguing the dismissal was ultra vires, violated the Administrative Procedure Act, and was unconstitutional. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted summary judgment in her favor, finding it bound by Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), which had carved out an exception to the President’s general removal power for the FTC on the ground that it performed “quasi-legislative” and “quasi-judicial” rather than executive functions. The court declared the removal ultra vires and issued a permanent injunction. A divided D.C. Circuit denied the Government’s motion for a stay, holding the Government had no prospect of success given Humphrey’s Executor. The Supreme Court stayed the district court’s order and granted certiorari before judgment.
Bedoya resigned during the litigation and his claims were dismissed as moot; only Slaughter’s claims proceeded to the Supreme Court.
The Court’s Holding
In a 5-1-3 decision authored by Chief Justice Roberts (joined by Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett; Justice Thomas joined all but Part III-B), the Court reversed the district court and held that the FTC’s for-cause removal protection is unconstitutional as contrary to the separation of powers. The Constitution vests the executive power in a single President who must be able to supervise and remove those who exercise that power on his behalf. The Court reaffirmed Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), under which the President has general administrative control over those who execute the laws, including the power to remove them at will. Because the FTC unquestionably exercises executive power — promulgating binding rules, enforcing statutes through in-house adjudication, collecting civil penalties in the billions, and filing civil suits in federal court — its Commissioners must be removable by the President without cause.
The Court expressly overruled Humphrey’s Executor to the extent it holds otherwise. The majority concluded that Humphrey’s rested on an untenable distinction — that the FTC occupied “no place in the executive department” and exercised “no part of the executive power” — a premise the Court had already recognized as untenable by 1988 in Morrison v. Olson and further eroded in Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB. The Court found that none of the traditional stare decisis factors — quality of reasoning, consistency with precedent, workability, or reliance interests — counseled retention of Humphrey’s. Congressional reliance on Humphrey’s to insulate agencies from presidential control was, the Court said, precisely the constitutional problem, not a reason to preserve the decision.
The Court declined to define the full outer bounds of which offices are subject to Myers’s removal rule. It left open whether Congress may impose some form of tenure protection for entities like the Federal Reserve (which traces its lineage to the First and Second Banks of the United States) or for non-Article III adjudicatory bodies. Those questions were not briefed and were reserved for future cases.
Key Takeaways
- Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935) is overruled to the extent it permits Congress to insulate officers of agencies exercising executive power from at-will presidential removal.
- The FTC’s for-cause removal provision, 15 U.S.C. §41, is unconstitutional; FTC Commissioners may be removed by the President at will.
- The President’s removal power is not merely about discipline — it is a structural requirement for accountability: the President cannot be held responsible for officers he cannot control.
- Congressional reliance on Humphrey’s Executor to create “independent” agencies does not generate a reliance interest sufficient to preserve an unconstitutional precedent.
- The Court reserved questions about the Federal Reserve and non-Article III courts, signaling those structures may be treated differently in future litigation.
Why It Matters
Trump v. Slaughter is one of the most consequential administrative-law decisions in nearly a century. By overruling Humphrey’s Executor, the Court eliminates the constitutional foundation on which Congress built the modern landscape of “independent” multi-member agencies — entities such as the FTC, SEC, NLRB, FCC, and CFTC whose members have long enjoyed for-cause removal protections designed to insulate them from direct presidential direction. Those protections are now constitutionally suspect wherever the agency exercises core executive functions. Agency leaders, regulated industries, and Congress must now grapple with whether existing tenure statutes for other multi-member commissions survive this ruling.
For practitioners, the decision resets the posture of pending and future challenges to agency leadership structures, enforcement actions, and rulemakings at agencies whose independence rested on Humphrey’s. It also raises immediate questions about the status of rules and adjudications conducted by commissioners who serve under now-invalid tenure protections. The Court’s explicit carve-outs for the Federal Reserve and non-Article III tribunals will themselves become the focal point of the next wave of constitutional litigation over presidential control of the administrative state.