Dec. 8 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Monday about President Donald Trump’s firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter in a case that could upend 90 years of precedent.
The high court’s decision, which is expected in the summer, could allow presidents to remove independent regulators without just cause. If the Supreme Court sides with Trump, it would go directly against the court’s 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor vs. United States, which upheld the FTC’s protections from removal as constitutional.
According to the 1935 Supreme Court decision, FTC commissioners may only be dismissed from their jobs “by the president for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
In March, Trump fired Democratic FTC commissioners Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, both of whom claimed the terminations were illegal.
The FTC is a bipartisan, independent federal agency that works to protect consumers from questionable business practices. Slaughter said preventing the president from being able to terminate commissioners without just cause allows the FTC to remain independent.
“Independence allows the decision-making that is done by these boards and commissions to be on the merits, about the facts and about protecting the interests of the American people,” she said, according to NPR. “That is what Americans deserve from their government.”
Trump, meanwhile, insisted his executive power gives him the ability to fire workers at independent agencies. In September, the Supreme Court agreed with Trump, allowing him to fire Slaughter through a brief administrative stay on a lower court’s order blocking the termination.
Trump appointed Slaughter, a Democrat, to the FTC in 2018. Former President Joe Biden then appointed her to be acting chair of the agency before nominating her for a new term. The Senate confirmed that nomination, giving her a second seven-year term starting in 2024.
The Hill reported that U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer will represent the U.S. government in Monday’s Supreme Court hearing.
“The court should repudiate anything that remains of Humphrey’s Executor and ensure that the president, not multimember agency heads, controls the executive power that Article II vests in him alone,” Sauer said in court filings.
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