Supreme Court allows Trump to fire -- for now -- remaining Democrat on FTC

Source: npr


September 22, 20253:49 PM ET Nina Totenberg


In an emergency order Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed President Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, the last remaining Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission. The court's action is technically temporary, since the justices said they will hear arguments in the case in December, but every indication is that the conservative court majority will use the case to reverse a major Supreme Court precedent that dates back almost a century.

Congress created the FTC and lots of other agencies to be multi-member, bipartisan regulatory agencies. And the Supreme Court in 1935 upheld those statutes ruling ruled against then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt's claim that he could fire FTC commissioners at will. In a unanimous opinion at the time, the court said Congress acted within its powers in declaring that a commissioner could only be fired for misconduct — not for a policy disagreement...............




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The result will be that whereas in the past, these agencies had to be bipartisan, with a minority of opposition party members, now there will be no such requirement. In short, Trump can name all the agency members. And if his successor is a Democrat, he or she can fire all the Republicans.

Since Trump's appointment of three ultra-conservative justices, the Supreme Court's conservative majority has been edging ever closer to reversing the way independent agencies operate. The court's conservatives believe in a so-called unitary executive, meaning that the president is the executive branch, as Chief Justice John Roberts put it in granting Trump significant immunity from prosecution even when he was out of office.....................................


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