On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Trump v. Slaughter, No. 25-332, holding that the Federal Trade Commission's for-cause removal provision violates the separation of powers required by the Constitution; the FTC performs executive functions, and thus its commissioners are removable by the president at will.
Federal law states that Federal Trade Commission commissioners may be removed only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. Soon after beginning his second term, President Trump fired FTC commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, without citing a cause under the statute.
Slaughter sued, asking to be restored to her former office, contending that her removal was ultra vires and violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution. The district court granted her motion for summary judgment. A divided D.C. Circuit denied the government's motion for a stay pending appeal, and the Supreme Court granted the stay and granted certiorari before judgment.
The Supreme Court reversed the district court's order and held that the FTC's for-cause removal provision violated separation of powers. In so concluding, the Court looked to the Constitution's text, structure, and history. It explained the Constitution vests the executive power in the president and provides that he may appoint officers, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to assist him in discharging his duties. The Framers' discussions at the time of ratification confirmed that the ability to remove these officers at will was part of the president's executive power. The Court reasoned that the Constitution's directive that the president may "appoint" executive officers was deliberate, as Founders such as Jefferson at the time had explained that the power to appoint included the power to remove. The question of presidential removal power was then discussed at the First Congress, where James Madison and others, in what came to be known as the "Decision of 1789," endorsed the understanding that the president may remove executive officers at will.
The Court stated that it had reinforced the Decision of 1789 more than once in its own decisions, most notably in Myers v. United States, where it proclaimed that the Constitution grants the president the power to remove executive officers at will. In Humphrey's Executor, however, after President Roosevelt fired an FTC commissioner without cause, the Court concluded that Myers did not control where officers may perform executive functions but exercise "no part of the executive power." There the Supreme Court concluded that the FTC's duties were not executive, but instead mostly quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative. In penning Humphrey's Executor, the Court stressed that its holding applied only to agencies that were independent of executive authority and exercised no executive power. In later cases, the Court had opined that the FTC duties it had previously qualified as quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative were instead executive, undermining the Humphrey's holding. The Court also noted that over the years it had refused to extend Humphrey's beyond its specific facts, meanwhile it had reiterated its holding in Myers.
The Court thus concluded that Humphrey's had been effectively overturned, save for its observation that an agency that exercises no executive power need not fall within the rule that the president may remove executive officers at will. Beyond that narrow rule, the Court explained Humphrey's was now expressly overturned because the quality of the decision's reasoning, the consistency with the Court's other cases, the workability of the rule, and the interests of those who had relied on Humphrey's all weighed in favor of overturning it, notwithstanding the doctrine of stare decisis. The Court said the Humphrey's Court had labeled quintessentially executive functions as quasi-judicial and legislative with little reasoning beyond the "quasi" label. It further reasoned that Humphrey's had been applied only once, in a situation involving a purely adjudicatory body, and otherwise had been undermined in the Court's jurisprudence over the years. Lower courts, it reasoned, had found the case confusing and indeterminate. And though Slaughter argued that Congress relied on Humphrey's to create agencies insulated from presidential control, the Court concluded this was not a legitimate reliance interest but rather was precisely the problem because Congress could not possess more power than the Constitution gives.
With those principles in mind, the Court concluded it was not a close case. The FTC's powers, including to flesh out statutory regimes, largely outside the remit of courts; enforce statutes and rules through in-house adjudications; and sue on behalf of the United States in federal court, are all executive powers, which in turn meant the FTC's officers must be removable at will by the president.
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined, and in which Justice Thomas joined as to all but Part III-B. Justice Gorsuch filed a concurring opinion. Justice Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, which Justices Jackson and Kagan joined.
