High court expands Trump’s power over the federal bureaucracy

Summary

• The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that presidents may remove leaders of independent federal agencies without cause.
• The decision overturns the nearly century-old Humphrey’s Executor precedent protecting agency independence.
• The ruling expands presidential authority over the executive branch while raising concerns about agency politicization.
• The Court separately blocked Trump from removing a Federal Reserve governor, preserving the central bank’s independence.

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that President Donald Trump could fire the heads of independent agencies without cause, handing the president a major victory in his push to exert greater control over the federal bureaucracy and concentrate power in the White House.

The justices struck down a nearly century-old precedent that has allowed Congress to insulate the leaders of roughly two-dozen agencies from political influence by requiring the president have good reason to dismiss them.

The 6-3 ideologically divided ruling will usher in one of the largest changes to the operation of the federal government in decades and fulfills a major goal of the Trump administration and many conservatives, who have long argued the president should exercise unfettered authority over the executive branch.

Trump officials said the change will make the government more accountable to voters who elect the president, but Democrats and some former agency officials worry it will lead to the politicization of regulations involving product safety, elections, nuclear energy and much more.

In a separate ruling, the justices blocked Trump from removing a governor of the Federal Reserve, which would have given the president greater control over the powerful central bank.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by the court’s five other conservatives. He said protections that kept the president from firing Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, were unconstitutional.

“We hold that such protection from removal is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution,” Roberts wrote.

The ruling came over the sharp objections of the court’s three liberals, who said it would upset the structure of the Federal Communications Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, and other agencies that Congress created to make decisions based on nonpartisan expertise and technical knowledge. Most are run by bipartisan, multimember commissions.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor read her dissenting opinion from the bench to signal her strong disagreement with the majority. She was joined by the court’s two other liberals.

“Today, the Court discards that democratic regime in favor of one that distorts the structure of Government to fit the majority’s theory of unitary, total executive control,” Sotomayor wrote. “The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before. It is a power, however, that neither the People, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him.”

Legal experts had long expected the Supreme Court to rule against the precedent protecting independent agency heads, known as Humphrey’s Executor, because the justices had been chipping away at it for years. Roberts called it a “dried husk” during arguments in December.

Trump fired Slaughter and the other Democrat on the five-member FTC, Alvaro Bedoya, without cause in March 2025. The dismissals were part of a broader campaign by the president to remove perceived liberal leaders from independent agencies and replace them with loyalists.

Slaughter challenged her dismissal in federal court, saying Trump had exceeded his authority under the law creating the FTC. The law says the president can fire members only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The agency works on antitrust and consumer protection issues.

A federal judge cited the Humphrey’s Executorprecedent in reinstating Slaughter to her job. That decision was upheld by an appeals court before the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene. Roberts paused Slaughter’s reinstatement in September so the high court could weigh the administration’s appeal.

During arguments in December, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said regulatory agencies like the FTC had become “a headless fourth branch insulated from political accountability and democratic control” and that curbing the president’s power to remove agency heads infringed on his powers.

Trump has often disparaged the federal bureaucracy as a “deep state” undermining his agenda. He has moved to fire thousands of federal workers, shutter agencies and remove civil service protections to bring the government more firmly under his control.

Many in the administration also support the unitary executive theory, which holds that the Constitution vests direct control of the executive branch solely in the president so that he should be free to fire any of its officials at will. Since the Reagan administration, conservatives have pushed to give the president greater control over hiring and firing decisions in the government.

Sotomayor warned in her dissent that Monday’s ruling will engulf the government in confusion.

“Today, the majority replaces 90 years of proven, workable practice with a half-baked theory of executive power that is simultaneously all encompassing yet also subject to necessary but undefined exceptions,” she wrote. “The one thing that does appear to be clear going forward is that chaos will follow.”

Trump initially nominated Slaughter to the FTC in 2018. She was unanimously approved by the Senate before President Joe Biden renominated her in 2023. Slaughter has become an outspoken critic of Trump’s efforts to cut the federal workforce.

Amit Agarwal, Slaughter’s attorney, told the justices in December that the nation had a long tradition of creating independent agencies and the FTC’s removal protections were consistent with the separation of powers.

“Multimember agencies have been part of our story since 1790,” Agarwal told the justices.

Slaughter’s case echoed the one that created the Humphrey’s Executor precedent in 1935. President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to dismiss an FTC commissioner, William Humphrey, over political differences related to the New Deal and other issues.

The Supreme Court found Humphrey’s firing was illegal and upheld the law creating the FTC, concluding it was lawful for Congress to carve out job protections for independent agency heads.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly backed Trump’s efforts to remove the heads of independent agencies on its emergency docket, allowing him to dismiss members of the National Labor Relations Board, Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission in rulings over the last year.

The justices have also diminished Humphrey’s Executor in recent years. In the most significant case, the high court ruled in 2020 that the law creating removal protections for the director of the powerful Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was unconstitutional because it violated the separation of powers.