Supreme Court Overturns Humphrey's Executor, Expanding Presidential Removal Power

On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Trump v. Slaughter that the president may remove Federal Trade Commission members without cause, upholding President Trump's March 2025 firing of Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. Since 1914, federal law had allowed removal of FTC commissioners only for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts held that FTC commissioners exercise executive power and must be subject to presidential control, adding that if anything remained of the 1935 precedent Humphrey's Executor, the Court was overruling it. The three liberal justices dissented. In a separate order the same week, the Court voted 5-4 to let Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook keep her position while her removal is litigated.

The decision removes a statutory check Congress built to insulate roughly two dozen multimember agencies — including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission — from at-will presidential removal, and effectively ends the requirement that the FTC be bipartisan. Supporters describe it as restoring unified executive control the Constitution requires; critics warn it lets any president fill independent boards with loyalists and leave opposing-party seats vacant, as Trump has done at the FTC.

Because the ruling comes from the Supreme Court, it is final and immediately controlling on lower courts weighing similar removals.