Roberts lets Trump temporarily fire FTC commissioner despite 90-year precedent

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a temporary win on Monday, allowing him to terminate a Federal Trade Commission member, for now, despite nearly a century of precedent.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, granted an administrative stay in response to Trump’s request last week to fire Democratic Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. The move lets Trump remove Slaughter from the FTC while the justices review his emergency appeal.

Roberts instructed Slaughter to respond to Trump’s appeal by Sept. 15.

An appeals court had refused to let Trump fire Slaughter, a move that the White House claimed interfered with his executive authority.

“Article II precludes a court from ordering the reinstatement of an executive officer removed by the president,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in an emergency appeal. “The president’s removal power is ‘‘conclusive and preclusive,’’ which means that it ‘may not be regulated by Congress or reviewed by the courts.’”

Slaughter, however, said emergency action from the high court wasn’t necessary when the lower court had followed longstanding precedent.

“President Trump’s attempt to terminate Commissioner Slaughter without cause ‘def[ied] binding, on-point, and repeatedly preserved Supreme Court precedent,’ namely, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States , the numerous decisions of this court that ‘expressly refused . . . to reconsider’ it,” Slaugher wrote.

Regulators are typically shielded from political interference by for-cause removal protections. Board members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but a landmark 1935 Supreme Court ruling limited presidential authority over independent commissions.

Humphrey’s Executor v. United States determined regulators can only be fired for misconduct — not because their decisions aren’t favorable to the current administration.

The conservative supermajority has severely curtailed the 90-year precedent in recent months, ceding to Trump’s repeated requests to dismiss ideological foes. This emergency appeal — the 23rd of Trump’s second term — could effectively overturn the ruling without the high court’s thorough review.

A panel on the D.C. Circuit refused to remove the commissioner, relying on Humphrey’s . Slaughter said that her case was a mirror to the facts involved in the precedent, involving the same provision of the FTC Act.

But Trump characterized the appeals court’s rejection as “subverting the hierarchy of the federal court system created by the Constitution and Congress,” citing the court’s recent shadow docket rulings.

“[The lower courts] have made clear that, regardless of recent developments on [this] court’s emergency docket,’ they will adhere to their expansive and incorrect interpretation of Humphrey’s Executor,” Sauer wrote. “And they have explained that they will persist in that adherence ‘unless and until’ this court grants certiorari and overrules that decision.”

Trump suggested that the justices skip a pending merits review by the appeals court, pushing the high court to take on the review itself.

“Uncertainty about the continued status of Humphrey’s Executor and the constitutionality of statutory removal protections is disrupting the work of federal agencies,” Sauer wrote. “And the ‘downsides of delay in resolving the status of [Humphrey’s Executor] outweigh the benefits of further lower court consideration.’”

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