Supreme Court allows Trump to fire FTC commissioner

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday allowed President Donald Trump to fire a leader of the Federal Trade Commission, setting up a court battle over a 90-year-old limit on executive power over independent agencies.

In an emergency order, a divided court announced that it would allow Trump, for now, to fire Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, an FTC commissioner, and that it would hear argument in the case in December, a signal that a majority of the court is ready to revisit a landmark precedent limiting presidential authority.

Trump had fired Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, two Democratic members of the FTC, in March. The federal agency, which enforces consumer protection and antitrust laws, typically has five commissioners — three from the president’s party and two from the opposing party.

After their firing, the two commissioners had said they planned to challenge their removal in court, relying on a 1935 landmark Supreme Court case, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, that also involved the firing of an FTC commissioner.

In its brief order Monday, the court said it would consider in December the broader question of whether to overturn the precedent that has prevented presidents from removing independent regulators without cause and solely over policy disagreements.

The decision by the court’s conservative majority to allow Trump to remove Slaughter drew a dissent from the three liberal justices.

Justice Elena Kagan said her conservative colleagues had essentially allowed the president to take charge of agencies Congress intended to protect from partisanship.

She wrote that the court’s majority, order by order, “has handed full control of all those agencies to the president.”

In a series of cases, the Supreme Court has signaled a willingness to potentially overrule the precedent and at some point declare that laws shielding agency heads from presidential ouster are unconstitutional. Still, the justices have not yet formally done so.

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