The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Monday in Trump v. Slaughter, and the question at hand is whether or not legal safeguards for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers.
The FTC is an independent federal agency established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act. Its mission is to protect American consumers from “unfair methods of competition through law enforcement, advocacy, research, and education.” The agency is headed by five commissioners, nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, who then serve seven-year terms, and no more than three can be from the same political party.
To separate the FTC’s goals from executive political pressure, the Act limited the president’s ability to remove a commissioner to “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
Background of Slaughter v. Trump
On March 18, 2025, President Donald Trump fired FTC Commissioner Melissa Slaughter under none of those circumstances.
In Slaughter’s termination email, a statement from Trump read, “Your continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities. Accordingly, I am removing you from office pursuant to my authority under Article II of the Constitution.”
Slaughter then sued the President and the remaining sitting FTC commissioners for firing her without statutory cause.
The lower courts sided with Slaughter. U.S. District Judge Loren Alikhan deemed Slaughter’s termination unlawful and ordered the Trump administration to reinstate her. The Trump administration then appealed Alikhan’s order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the 3-judge panel voted 2-1 against the administration.
“To grant a stay would be to defy the Supreme Court’s decisions that bind our judgments. That we will not do,” the order stated.
The lower courts contended that their decision was constrained by the 1935 Supreme Court ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which addressed this issue.
In the 1935 ruling, the justices ruled that the Constitution doesn’t give the president the same removal power over every federal officer. Some roles must be fully under presidential control; others can be protected from political firing — in this case, FTC commissioners.
But in a dissenting opinion, Circuit Judge Neomi Rao said she would have granted the administration’s request for a stay.
“Even assuming that Slaughter’s removal was unlawful, the district court nonetheless lacked the power to issue the injunction,” Rao argued. “The injunction interferes with the President’s exclusive powers. The district court nominally ordered the remaining FTC Commissioners and their subordinates and agents not to remove Slaughter, but these officials have no power to remove her. By statute, only the President may remove an FTC commissioner.”
Following the D.C. Circuit’s denial of a pause, the Trump administration took the matter to the Supreme Court, requesting that Alikhan’s order be put on hold while the government’s appeal continues.
“The lower courts have once again ordered the reinstatement of a high-level officer wielding substantial executive authority whom the President has determined should not exercise any executive power, let alone significant rulemaking and enforcement powers,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued to the justices.
He also argued that the FTC is a different agency than it was 90 years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled in Humphrey’s Executor, having now “amassed considerable executive power ... Humphrey’s Executor aside, district courts cannot compel reinstatement of agency heads and allow them to purport to exercise executive power when the President has determined they should exercise none.”
An administrative stay was granted on September 8 by Chief Justice John Roberts. The Supreme Court then granted the stay and granted certiorari on September 22, 2025.
How is SCOTUS expected to rule?
During a Friday panel discussion hosted by the Federalist Society on Slaughter v. Trump, Georgetown University law professor Stephanie Barclay said the court’s emergency 6-3 stay overturning the lower courts’ rulings gives a “really strong indication” that “we know how the story ends.”
“It’s just going to be most interesting to see on what basis the court is going to rule and what sort of guidance they give (going) forward with respect to other agencies,” she added.
Both Barclay and fellow panelist Joel Alicea, a law professor at Catholic University of America, noted that Trump’s actions are not unique to his administration. Barclay argued the Biden administration removed officials who are traditionally viewed as independent agencies, which the Trump administration is pointing out in their case to show “this isn’t a partisan issue,” she said.
“The executive needs to be able to remove people that are exercising executive power,” Barclay continued. “If those people aren’t doing it consistent with the preferences of the voting American people, they have to be accountable to someone, and if not the president, then who? And Biden recognized that, and Trump recognizes that now, and other presidents in the past have recognized that, and this is just sort of a bipartisan need to make sure that we can faithfully execute the laws.”
Alicea added that though some might view this case as an “aggressive” use of executive power by Trump, he would argue that’s not the case. In fact, the majority of presidents would side with Trump, he said, and though Humphrey’s Executor is a widely respected decision, neither agreeing or disagreeing with it is a radical decision.
“If the Supreme Court vindicates the President’s view here, all it will be doing is restoring the state of constitutional law to what it was before Humphrey’s executor and had been since the founding,” Alicea said. So I don’t think that this case should be viewed as a kind of exercise of aggressive or groundbreaking or novel executive power by this President, and I don’t think that the court vindicating that should be viewed as something radical, either. It really is just a restoration of what had been the constitutional default rule for a very long time."