Trump’s attempt to fire FTC Democrat gets a boost from Supreme Court

Summary

1935 Supreme Court is key precedent The key precedent in the case is Humphrey's Executor v. United States, a 1935 ruling in which the Supreme Court unanimously held that the president can only remove FTC commissioners for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. Trump's termination notices to Slaughter and Bedoya said they were being fired simply because their presence on the commission "is inconsistent with my Administration's priorities." The Trump administration argues that Humphrey's Executor shouldn't apply to the current version of the FTC because it exercises significant executive power. But the appeals court, in a 2-1 ruling, said "the present-day Commission exercises the same powers that the Court understood it to have in 1935 when Humphrey's Executor was decided." "The government has no likelihood of success on appeal given controlling and directly on point Supreme Court precedent," the panel majority said. But while the government was found to have no likelihood of success in the DC Circuit appeals court, its chances are presumably much better in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court previously stayed District Court decisions in cases involving Trump's removal of Democrats from the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In a 2020 decision involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the court said in a footnote that its 1935 "conclusion that the FTC did not exercise executive power has not withstood the test of time." If the Supreme Court ultimately rules in favor of Trump, it could throw out the Humphrey's Executor ruling or clarify it in a way that makes it inapplicable to the FTC. But Humphrey's Executor is still a binding precedent, Slaughter's opposition to the administrative stay said. "This Court should not grant an administrative stay where the court below simply 'follow[ed] the case which directly controls,' as it was required to do," the Slaughter fili...