Supreme Court Rules FTC Commissioner Can Be Fired
On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States (the Court) struck down Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the nearly century-old precedent that restricted presidential authority to fire independent agency officers at will. The Court’s decision in Trump v. Slaughter, in which a former Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) challenged the president’s authority to fire her, means that cases involving Trump’s at-will firings at some other federal agencies are likely to come out in the president’s favor—including his firing of leadership at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), among others.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court’s six-person majority, expressed the view that Humphrey’s Executor had been wrongly interpreted by prior courts:
… it is not clear to us why Congress would need to allow the President any say in firings. If it is so ‘critical’ for an agency’ to have independence and to act with impartiality free from the suspicion of partisan direction,’ then why should the President have a role at all? Certainly those legislators who disagreed with the Decision of 1789 were happy to leave him out. The answer, then as now, is that these officers exercise the President’s power, not their own, and thus must be responsible to him. We do not allow intrusions on Article I nor on Article III. We see no reason to allow intrusions on Article II either.
However, Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, dissented, arguing that “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.”
On the same day it handed down its decision in Trump v. Slaughter, the Court also issued a ruling in Trump v. Cook, which challenges the without-cause firing of Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook. Here, writing for the Court’s five-person majority, Chief Justice Roberts opined that if the Trump administration were correct, it “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 Court declined to stay a lower court’s order that allows Cook to remain on the job while her case proceeds.
As we previously discussed here and here, the Court’s decision to overturn Humphrey’s Executor will have far-reaching effects for many federal agencies. The decision’s full impact on historically independent agencies like the FTC, CPSC, and others may not be clear for some time, but we will continue to monitor and report on important developments.