Supreme Court Allows Trump to Remove FTC Democrat

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25, 2025 — The Supreme Court has officially allowed President Donald Trump to fire the last remaining Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission in case involving the president’s authority to staff independent agencies.

Trump dismissed FTC commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter in March, and she vowed to challenge the action in court. On Monday, the justices granted Trump’s request to stay a lower court ruling, allowing him to immediately remove the commissioner.

This raised the possibility of overturning Humphrey’s Executor, the foundational precedent that upheld Congress’s ability to protect independent agency officials from being fired without cause. The Court said it will hear arguments in December on whether to scrap the precedent restricting presidents from firing independent regulators without cause.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued a sharp dissent. She warned that the Court has repeatedly used its emergency docket this year to give the president unchecked removal power.

Kagan emphasized that Congress explicitly bars such firings — the FTC Act allows removal only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” She argued that, the majority is handing “full control of all those agencies to the President,” threatening their independence.