The Trump FTC dismissal affair could extend the presidential authority over the agencies

The Supreme Court should re -examine a historic decision concerning the president’s ability to dismiss members of independent agencies, and the result could extend the executive power and have large -scale implications.

The High Court revealed in an order last week that it would revisit the executor of Humphrey against the United States, a decision of 1935 according to which Hans Von Spakovsky, legal researcher of the Conservative Heritage Foundation, said that it is on “according to life”.

Contrary to the decision in Humphrey, Von Spakovsky said that agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and various Labor Commissions should not be isolated from presidential layoffs.

“The Constitution indicates that the president is the head of the executive branch,” Von Spakovsky told Fox News Digital. “This means that, like the CEO of a large company, they can supervise and manage the whole company, or in this case, the entire executive branch, and you cannot ask the congress to take parts of this and to say:` `Well, they will continue to do executive things, including the police, but you will not have control over them ”.

Scotus allows Trump to dismiss the FTC commissioner named Biden

The Supreme Court building is seen in Washington, DC (AP / Jon Elswick)

The decision of the Supreme Court came in response to a challenge to an FTC commissioner appointed by Biden that President Donald Trump has drawn at will after taking office.

The High Court said that in an emergency 6-3 emergency decision, Trump’s dismissal of the Commissioner, Rebecca Slaughter, could remain in place for the moment while he uses his case to face the executor’s executor of Humphrey, who was centered on a dismissal of the FTC under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The high court judged that Roosevelt could not dismiss a commissioner without reason.

Slaughter qualified her as an illegal dismissal, pointing to Humphrey and the FTC Act, which indicates that the commissioners cannot be dismissed from their seven -year mandate without cause such as embezzlement or negligence.

Joshua Blackman, professor at South Texas College of Law, told Fox News Digital that if Humphrey was canceled or narrowed, he will probably also apply to other agencies that have statutory protections against fire designed to preserve their independence.

“I think this decision is necessarily going beyond the FTC,” said Blackman. “The only question is whether they argue that the federal reserve is different.”

The Supreme Court said Trump can dismiss CPSC members appointed by Democrats

The commissioners of the Federal Commerce Commission Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya discuss during a hearing of the Chamber’s Judicial Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, July 13, 2023. (Shuran Huang for the Washington Post via Getty Images)

The High Court indicated in a previous decision on the shadow file concerning the layoffs of the Labor Council this year that it considers the federal reserve as one, a “almost primitive” structure rooted in the traditions of the first central banks. A separate case involving the dismissal of the governor of the Federal Reserve Lisa Cook tests this position.

Von Spakovsky said the Supreme Court had progressed to address that of Humphrey. The 2010 decision to reduce the Sarbanes-Oxley law by stripping the independence of an accounting supervisory board of directors and the decision five years ago, noting that the president could dismiss the director of the office of financial protection at will.

In the latter case, the chief judge John Roberts wrote that the power of the president “to delete – and therefore supervise – those who exercise the executive power in his name stems from the text of article II”. The structure of the “novel” of the CFPB challenged this presidential power because one director oversees an agency which “exercises a significant executive power”.

Trump administrator urges the Supreme Court to allow the president to fire a member of the Federal Commerce Committee

Head judge of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts, attended inauguration ceremonies at the American Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. (SOMODEVILLA / POOL CHIP via Reuters)

The decision in favor of Trump would help the president and his conservative allies to achieve their declared objective to achieve a unit framework, a theory that says that the president should have a unique control over executive power.

As part of this vision, Trump suddenly bypassed many statutes to tear people named protected in independent agencies when he took office, the Supreme Court has now put the point of view in the case of Slaughter.

Professor of the Faculty of Law of the University of Boston, Jed Shugerman, said in an online statement that Trump had done “more to establish a unit framework than all the judges of the world could never do”.

However, Shugerman criticized the president, saying that his authority tests also “did more to discredit and expose the unitary executive theory as an authority without law than any judge or legal scholar”.

John Shu, an expert in constitutional law that served in the two Bush administrations, recently told Fox News Digital that he thought that the Supreme Court would restrict the executor of Humphrey because the powers of the FTC have been considerably widened since its creation.

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“The Federal Trade Commission of 1935 is very different from the Federal Trade Commission today,” said Shu.

Shu said that today’s FTC can open investigations, make assignments to appear, bring prosecution, impose financial sanctions and more. The FTC now has executive, quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions, he said.