WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on June 29 made it easier for President Donald Trump to fire leaders of independent agencies in a decision that shifts power from Congress to the president and could redefine how more than a dozen agencies operate.
Overturning a 90-year-old precedent, the court said limits Congress placed on a president’s ability to remove members of the Federal Trade Commission encroached on presidential power.
The FTC enforces a variety of antitrust and consumer protection laws affecting virtually every area of commerce.
The commission was established by Congress to be led by politically balanced boards of experts serving staggered, fixed terms meant to insulate them from interference.
But Trump argued presidential control will make agencies like the FTC, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Election Commission more accountable to voters who elect presidents.
Trump asked the court to overturn Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 decision upholding removal restrictions for leaders of multimember administrative agencies. The court has been chipping away at that decision since 2010.
Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the 6-3 opinion for the court, which divided along ideological lines.
Roberts said a president “must have the assistance of officers he can trust.”
“Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work,” Roberts wrote.
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority gave the president “far greater power than ever before.”
“In granting the President this unbridled authority, the Court upends its precedent, misconstrues our history, and sheds any pretense of judicial modesty,” she wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Conservatives Advance Unitary Executive
Under the “unitary executive theory” that conservatives have advanced for years, the Constitution gives presidents complete control over executive functions, which must include the power to remove commission members.
In 1935, however, the Supreme Court said the Federal Trade Commission’s duties were “neither political nor executive, but predominantly quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.”
“Like the Interstate Commerce Commission, its members are called upon to exercise the trained judgment of a body of experts ‘appointed by law and informed by experience,’” Justice George Sutherland wrote for the court. “Such a body cannot in any proper sense be characterized as an arm or an eye of the executive.”
The Department of Justice argued that even if that was a correct interpretation of the FTC in 1935 − which it disputed − it no longer is.
“The modern-day FTC, like its many independent-agency counterparts and its 1935 predecessor, exercises executive power – indeed, quite a bit of it,” Solicitor General John Sauer said in a written filing.
Trump Declared He Controls All Federal Agencies
After taking office, Trump declared that all federal agencies were under his control.
“The days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over,” the president said in a March 2025 address to Congress.
That same month, Trump fired the two Democratic members of the five-member Federal Trade Commission board, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya.
He’d already removed Democratic members of two federal labor boards and would later fire the three Democrats on the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The Supreme Court allowed the firings to remain in place while it decided whether Congress could limit the reasons for removing regulators to “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
Federal Reserve Case Heard Separately
One question hanging over the case was whether the court would treat the Federal Reserve Board of Governors differently, as the justices suggested they might last year when issuing a temporary ruling about firing labor commission members without cause.
And the court did not allow Trump to immediately fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, deciding instead to hear arguments in January on his claim that he had just cause to remove her.
The court ruled on June 29 that Trump cannot remove Cook from the Federal Reserve while she challenges the dismissal.
Slaughter’s and Cook’s cases are among several the justices are deciding this term that test Trump’s expansive view of presidential authority.
The court in February said Trump didn’t have the emergency power he claimed to impose the sweeping tariffs at the center of his economic agenda.
And the court will decide if Trump’s interpretation of the Constitution means he can deny citizenship to some babies born in the United States, in a case rooted in the liberties granted all Americans in the wake of the Civil War.