Washington — Chief Justice John Roberts has allowed President Trump to remove a member of the Federal Trade Commission for now.
The chief justice granted interim relief to the Trump administration Monday while the Supreme Court takes more time to consider its request to lift a lower court order requiring Rebecca Kelly Slaughter to be reinstated to her position at the commission.
Slaughter is one of several appointees at independent agencies that the president has removed since he returned to the White House. The Supreme Court has allowed Mr. Trump to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission while legal challenges to the removals move forward.
Mr. Trump appointed Slaughter to the FTC in 2018, and former President Joe Biden reappointed her to the role. Her term was set to expire in 2029.
But in March, Slaughter received an email from the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, which contained a message from Mr. Trump informing her that she had been removed from the FTC. Slaughter sued the president and officials at the commission, arguing that her removal violated the Federal Trade Commission Act. That law limits the grounds that a president can remove a commissioner to inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.
In July, a federal district court in Washington, D.C., ruled in Slaughter’s favor and found that Mr. Trump’s removal was “unlawful” and “without legal effect.” The Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which declined last week to freeze the district court’s order while it considers the case.
The Trump administration then sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court.
The dispute over Slaughter’s firing involves the same agency and removal protections that were at issue in a 1935 case known as Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. In that landmark decision, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the restrictions and ruled that Congress could enact for-cause removal protections for multi-member commissions of experts that are balanced along partisan lines and do not exercise any executive power.
But the high court has chipped away at that precedent in recent years and reasserted the president’s power to remove executive officers without cause. In a recent cases involving Mr. Trump’s removals of members of the National Labor Relations Board, Merit Systems Protection Board and Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Supreme Court indicated it believes the entities exercise considerable executive power.
In its request for emergency relief from the Supreme Court, lawyers for the Trump administration argued that the modern FTC exercises “vast executive authority,” a change from the 1935-era commission.
In addition to seeking to remove Slaughter, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to take up the case and decide the merits before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rules.