The Trump Administration’s efforts to assert broader control over the federal bureaucracy appeared to advance on Monday, as the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority signaled support for the administration in a case with significant implications for the independence of certain federal agencies.
The case, Trump v. Slaughter, arises from President Trump’s March 2025 removal of Rebecca Slaughter and another Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The Court spent more than two hours examining whether the president had the authority to fire Slaughter despite a 1914 statute that permits the removal of an FTC commissioner only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” That statute was upheld in the landmark 1935 decision Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which limited then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt to dismiss an FTC commissioner over political disagreements.
At the center of the administration’s challenge to Humphrey’s Executor and the point to which several conservative justices appeared most receptive is the once-obscure “unitary executive theory.” The legal theory asserts that Congress cannot restrict the president’s power to remove officials within the executive branch because Article II of the Constitution vests all executive authority in the president. The Court established a precedent for overturning Humphrey’s Executor in a 2020 ruling when it determined the president’s ability to fire the single Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau only “for cause” violated the Constitution’s separation of powers, despite congressional intent.
The Court’s ruling in the case is expected in the coming months.
