Supreme Court overrules Humphrey's Executor and lets the president fire independent agency leaders at will

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down the federal law that barred presidents from firing Federal Trade Commission members except for cause, and in doing so overruled Humphrey's Executor v. United States, the 1935 decision that had let Congress shield the leaders of independent agencies from removal at will. The vote was 6 to 3.

The ruling, in Trump v. Slaughter, hands the president authority to remove the leaders of roughly two dozen multi-member agencies that Congress designed to operate at arm's length from the White House. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by the court's five other Republican-appointed justices. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, and read a summary of it from the bench.

In a separate decision issued the same day, Trump v. Cook, the court voted 5 to 4 to keep Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in her seat while her own removal case proceeds. Roberts wrote that opinion as well.

What the FTC law did

The Federal Trade Commission has five members, no more than three from any one party, each appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to a seven-year term. Federal law allowed the president to remove a commissioner only for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." The court held that restriction unconstitutional as applied to officials who exercise executive power, on the ground that it intrudes on the president's authority under the separation of powers.

"Subordinates who exercise the President's power are subject to removal by him," Roberts wrote. "Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people." Of the 1935 precedent, he wrote: "If anything more is left of Humphrey's, we overrule it."

The decision is a win for the unitary executive theory, the argument that the Constitution gives the president complete control over the executive branch and that for-cause removal limits are therefore invalid.

How the case got here

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter was first nominated to the FTC by President Donald Trump during his first term and renominated by President Joe Biden in 2023 to a second term. Last year the White House sent her a letter stating she had been "removed from the Federal Trade Commission, effective immediately." The letter did not cite inefficiency, neglect, or malfeasance. It said keeping her on the commission would be "inconsistent with my Administration's priorities."

Slaughter sued in federal court in Washington. U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan ordered her reinstated, and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to pause that order, with Judges Patricia Millett and Nina Pillard writing that only the Supreme Court could overturn Humphrey's Executor. The administration then asked the justices to step in. The court let the firing stand while it heard the case and ruled on the merits Monday.

The dissent

Sotomayor wrote that the decision moves power from agencies Congress built to be independent into the hands of the president. "Dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President's hands," she wrote. She added that the majority hands the president "a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted," and that the case "should have begun and ended with this Court's unanimous decision from almost a century ago: Humphrey's Executor."

The Federal Reserve carve-out

In Trump v. Cook, the court left in place the for-cause protection covering members of the Federal Reserve Board. Trump moved to remove Cook in August 2025, citing allegations that she listed two homes as her primary residence on 2021 mortgage applications. Cook has said the claim is "a manufactured pretext" and that she was targeted for declining to bow to political pressure on interest rates.

Roberts wrote that accepting the administration's position "would in effect transform the Federal Reserve's for-cause protection into at-will employment, an interpretive leap out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our Nation's tradition of central banking protected from political interference." The 5-4 ruling keeps Cook in her job for now; it does not resolve the underlying challenge to her removal.

What changes

The Slaughter decision applies beyond the FTC to other multi-member bodies whose members hold for-cause protection, a group that includes commissions overseeing securities, communications, consumer products, labor, and energy regulation, among others. The court's reasoning treats those protections as unconstitutional where the officials exercise executive power. The Cook ruling marks the Federal Reserve as a distinct case the majority was not prepared to fold into the same rule.