Supreme Court Strikes Down 91-Year Precedent, Hands Trump Power to Fire Independent Agency Heads

A 91-year-old bulwark falls

The Supreme Court on Monday overturned its 1935 ruling in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, striking down federal law that barred the president from firing members of the Federal Trade Commission except for cause[0]. By a 6-3 vote, the justices found that such removal protections violate the constitutional separation of powers, and gave President Donald Trump sweeping new authority over approximately two dozen multi-member agencies that Congress had long intended to operate independently[0].

The case centered on Trump's March 2025 firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat appointed during his first term and renominated by President Biden in 2023. Trump removed her by email, stating that her "continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with [the] Administration's priorities" — citing no grounds of inefficiency, neglect, or malfeasance, as the law requiredscotusblog +1. Slaughter sued, and lower courts ordered her reinstatementcbsnews. The Supreme Court had already frozen that order in September 2025 while it took up the case[0].

Roberts and Sotomayor draw battle lines

Writing for the six-justice conservative majority, Chief Justice John Roberts grounded the ruling in the "unitary executive" theory — the idea that the president must have complete control over the executive branch[0]. "The President must have the assistance of officers he can trust," Roberts wrote. "Neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work. Subordinates who exercise the President's power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people"[0].

Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored a 49-page dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson[0]. "Today," she wrote, "the Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws"cbsnews.

Agencies from FTC to EEOC now exposed

The ruling turns FTC commissioners into at-will employees serving at the president's pleasure, and effectively voids Congress's requirement that no single party hold more than three of the commission's five seatsscotusblog. Because numerous other agencies — including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission — were created on the premise of Humphrey's Executor protections, their independence is now in doubtscotusblog. Only the Federal Reserve was carved out, in a separate 5-4 order allowing Governor Lisa Cook to remain in her post while litigation proceeds in lower courtsscotusblog.

The decision builds on earlier chipping-away at the precedent: in Trump's first term, the court allowed the firing of the single-director Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head, limiting Humphrey's Executor to multimember boardsscotusblog. Monday's ruling erases even that distinction[0].