Supreme Court Hands Presidents Sweeping Power to Fire Agency Officials

A Landmark Ruling Reshapes the Balance of Power

The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a significant win on Monday by allowing him to remove the leaders of once-independent federal agencies at will, toppling a 1935 precedent in the process that could reorder the way the government functions. The 6-3 decision, split cleanly along ideological lines, is one of the most consequential shifts in executive authority in nearly a century — and its effects will be felt far beyond the Trump administration.

In the ruling, the court found that President Trump's March 2025 firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter without cause was lawful. Slaughter had been presented with no reason for her removal, only told her "continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with [the Trump] Administration's priorities." She sued, won in lower courts, and the case eventually reached the Supreme Court — where the conservative majority sided with the White House.

Ninety Years of Precedent, Erased

A lower court had found her firing unlawful, citing a 1935 landmark decision known as Humphrey's Executor, a case prompted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempted firing of an FTC commissioner over ideological disagreements. That precedent had stood for generations, protecting agency officials from being removed for purely political reasons. On Monday, the Supreme Court buried it.

The majority, comprised of all six conservative justices, found that the FTC's provision that commissioners could be removed by a president only for cause "is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution." "Independent agencies are not so independent after all," conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a concurring opinion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the three liberal dissenters, warned that the ruling "promises only chaos."

The ruling essentially turns FTC commissioners into at-will employees who serve at the pleasure of the president. It also effectively ends Congress' requirement that the FTC be bipartisan, so that no one party has too much sway — a rule Congress put in place recognizing the vast influence the FTC has over the lives of everyday Americans. The court's overruling of the nearly ninety-year-old precedent could also impact the president's authority to remove leaders of other agencies, such as the NLRB and MSPB.

The Federal Reserve Gets a Carve-Out — For Now

At the same time, the court made it far harder for this or future presidents to remove members of the Federal Reserve — blocking the Trump administration, for now, from ending the tenure of Fed Governor Lisa Cook over contested allegations of mortgage fraud. Last August, for the first time in the Federal Reserve's 111-year history, the president attempted to fire one of its governors. A few weeks later, a federal court issued an injunction to prevent him from doing so.

The court declined to resolve the underlying merits of Cook's case, saying instead that she was entitled to notice and a fair opportunity to respond to Trump's claims. The majority noted that accepting the government's full position "would allow the President to remove a member of the Federal Reserve at any time, for any reason, without any notice before, and without any judicial check after." The Fed's independence, in other words, remains a different and more protected category — at least for now.

What This Means Going Forward

In the majority opinion, Roberts pointed out that the FTC in its present state enforces and administers some 80 statutes that cover nearly every facet of the economy. That scope is exactly why critics of the ruling are alarmed. Slaughter herself said that as a result of the ruling, FTC policy will "unquestionably" become more political — and warned that "political isn't even the only problem."

For employers and businesses, the ruling could make the NLRB and other executive agencies more responsive to the presidential administration and its policy priorities — but it also introduces uncertainty, as agency leadership and thus agency policy may shift more rapidly with changes in administration. The Supreme Court is expected to deliver its remaining opinions of the current term today, Tuesday, June 30, including potentially consequential rulings on birthright citizenship and transgender athletes. Monday's decisions have already made clear that this term will be remembered as a turning point in the long-running debate over just how much power the presidency holds.