Supreme Court limits protections for independent agencies, allows removal of FTC commissioners while pausing Fed dispute

The Supreme Court on Monday sharply expanded presidential power over independent federal agencies, ruling that President Donald Trump can remove Federal Trade Commission commissioners despite a federal law that had shielded them from dismissal except for cause. In a separate decision the same day, however, the court declined for now to let Trump remove a member of the Federal Reserve’s governing board.

Together, the rulings redraw a longstanding boundary around presidential control of parts of the federal government. The FTC decision cuts back a key 1935 precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which had long been understood to let Congress give some members of independent commissions fixed terms and protection from being fired at will.

In Trump v. Slaughter, No. 25-332, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court that the FTC’s removal protection in 15 U.S.C. §41 is unconstitutional as applied to officers who exercise executive power. Roberts said the commission’s mix of powers still places it on the executive side of the constitutional line.

“the FTC unquestionably exercises executive power,” Roberts wrote, pointing to the agency’s rulemaking, enforcement and adjudicatory authority.

The opinion goes further than narrowing older precedent. “If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it,” Roberts wrote.

The ruling was effectively 6-3. Roberts was joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Clarence Thomas joined all but one part of the opinion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The case grew out of Trump’s March 2025 removal of two Democratic FTC commissioners, including Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. The FTC is the federal consumer protection and antitrust agency, and its commissioners traditionally have served staggered terms with statutory limits on when a president may fire them. Slaughter sued after her removal, setting up a direct test of whether those protections remained constitutional.

Monday’s decision means the president may remove FTC commissioners even though Congress wrote a for-cause restriction into the statute. More broadly, it signals that agencies long treated as partly insulated from White House control may be more vulnerable when their leaders perform executive functions such as enforcement and regulation.

But the court stopped short of applying that approach, at least immediately, to the Federal Reserve.

In Trump v. Cook, No. 25A312, the justices denied the administration’s emergency request to lift a lower-court injunction that kept Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook in office while her case proceeds. Roberts also wrote that opinion, and he was joined by Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh and Jackson in the 5-4 ruling. “Application for stay denied,” the order said.

Trump had sought to remove Cook on Aug. 25, 2025. Cook sued, and a district court blocked her removal while litigation continued. The Supreme Court left that injunction in place.

The court emphasized the Federal Reserve’s distinct historical status and said it would not risk destabilizing the central bank’s independence at this interim stage. The Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, plays a central role in setting monetary policy and overseeing financial stability. The justices did not decide the ultimate constitutional question of whether Cook can be removed. Instead, they preserved the status quo while lower courts continue to develop the case.

That distinction is central to Monday’s pair of rulings. In the FTC case, the court issued a merits decision that directly expanded presidential removal authority and expressly cut back Humphrey’s Executor. In the Fed case, the court issued only an interim ruling on an emergency request and left the underlying dispute unresolved.

The immediate result is a broad legal shift for independent agencies, with one important exception. After Slaughter, the president has stronger constitutional authority to remove officials at agencies that exercise executive power, even where Congress tried to limit that power. After Cook, the Federal Reserve remains, for now, on a different track while courts decide whether its governors can be treated the same way.