Supreme Court allows Trump’s firing of FTC commissioner, for now

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed President Donald Trump to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission without cause as the high court inches toward revisiting a landmark ruling about executive power over terminations.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a brief order that Biden-appointed FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter should remain fired from her job, at least for the next week, while the Supreme Court continues to consider her case.

The high court’s order responding to an emergency petition from the Trump administration comes as Slaughter has faced whiplash in the courts while challenging Trump’s decision to fire her at will.

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Federal Trade Commission Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya speak during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 13, 2023. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

A district court reinstated Slaughter, and then through the appeals process, Slaughter was re-fired, re-hired, and then re-fired once again on Monday. After an appellate court allowed her to return to work on Sept. 2, she did so right away, even sharing on social media multiple dissents she has authored in the days since her return.

In a statement provided to Fox News Digital, Slaughter said she respected the Supreme Court’s short-term decision and vowed to continue fighting her removal.

“I intend to see this case through to the end,” Slaughter said. “In the week I was back at the FTC it became even more clear to me that we desperately need the transparency and accountability Congress intended to have at bipartisan independent agencies.”

Trump’s decision to fire Slaughter and the other Democrat-appointed commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, stood in tension with the FTC Act, which says commissioners should only be fired from their seven-year tenures for cause, such as malfeasance.

President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Their firings are at odds with a 90-year-old Supreme Court ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which found that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s firing of an FTC commissioner was illegal.

While the Supreme Court has let Trump’s firings at other independent agencies proceed temporarily while the lawsuits play out in the lower courts, Slaughter’s case has presented the most blatant question yet to the justices about whether they plan to overturn Humphrey’s Executor. Legal scholars have speculated that the current conservative-leaning Supreme Court has an appetite to reverse or narrow that decision.

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The Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Solicitor General John Sauer argued to the high court that the FTC wielded significant executive power and that its authority had expanded since the 1930s, when Humphrey’s Executor first established that an at-will FTC firing was illegal. The FTC now enforces dozens of statutes, including the Sherman Act, and has power to bring lawsuits seeking injunctions and penalties, Sauer noted.

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“Contrary to the lower courts’ suggestion, Humphrey’s Executor does not mean that Article II permits tenure protections for any agency named the ‘Federal Trade Commission,’ no matter how much more executive power the FTC accumulates,” Sauer said.