Trump v. Slaughter
What’s at Stake
This case presents the question whether the president has unilateral authority to, without cause, fire commissioners of independent agencies.
Summary
In March 2025, President Trump purported to fire Rebecca Slaughter, a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), partway through the term for which she was appointed. The FTC Act provides that a president may remove a commissioner for cause—for example, for neglect or malfeasance—but President Trump did not remove Ms. Slaughter for any of those statutorily prescribed reasons. Ms. Slaughter brought this suit, and the district court held that President Trump’s removal of Ms. Slaughter violated the FTC Act; the case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The FTC Act’s restrictions on removal are not unique. For over a century, Congress has designed independent commissions with for-cause removal protections to ensure that agencies like the FTC, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, Merit Systems Protection Board, and others are insulated from presidential interference, politicization, and industry corruption. Those protections have helped promote stability and nonpartisan expertise.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of FTC’s for-cause removal protections 90 years ago in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935). But now, after several years of chipping away at that precedent, the Court may very well overrule it entirely and allow the President to fire independent commissioners without justification.
Core Legal Problem
Our amicus brief (which was filed on behalf of Public Justice, Consumer Federation of America, the UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and Demand Progress) makes four major points. First, it highlights the need for agency expertise free from presidential meddling, industry capture, and politicization in order to protect consumers and promote open and well-functioning markets. Second, it examines how the FTC’s independence has enabled it to issue critical regulations on issues ranging from tobacco to kids’ online privacy and safety. Third, it points to other independent commissions that operate in the consumer and financial spaces, like the CPSC and the SEC, as examples of why for-cause removal protections are so important. Fourth, it describes what will likely befall the American marketplace should agency independence be ended.