A divided federal appeals court on Sept. 2 reinstated Rebecca Slaughter as a member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after President Donald Trump removed her from the post.

The ruling is the latest development in the president’s ongoing effort to remove personnel from independent federal agencies whose appointees traditionally have been shielded from termination without cause.

Slaughter, formerly chief counsel to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), was first appointed to a seat reserved for Democrats on the FTC by Trump in 2018 and then reappointed in 2023 by President Joe Biden.

Trump fired Slaughter earlier this year. In a letter explaining the decision, the White House said keeping her in place would be inconsistent with the Trump administration’s priorities.

On July 17, U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan ruled that Slaughter’s termination was illegal because it violated a 1935 Supreme Court precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. That precedent upheld legal limitations Congress imposed on removing members of the FTC, an independent federal agency.

The Trump administration had asked the court to ignore Humphrey’s Executor and “bless what amounts to the implied overruling of a ninety-year-old, unanimous, binding precedent,” she said at the time. “Because ‘it is [the Supreme] Court’s prerogative alone to overrule one of its precedents,’ the court cannot, and will not, fulfill that request.”

The federal government appealed.

On Sept. 2, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2-1 to affirm AliKhan’s ruling.

Although an FTC member may be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” the panel determined Trump fired her without cause.

The panel denied the government’s motion to stay the district court’s ruling pending appeal.

“The government has no likelihood of success on appeal given controlling and directly on point Supreme Court precedent,” the panel said, citing the Federal Trade Commission Act’s for-cause removal protection for FTC members and Humphrey’s Executor.

Although the government argues the for-cause removal protection infringes on the power Article II of the Constitution gives the president, “that exact question was already asked and unanimously answered by the Supreme Court” in Humphrey’s Executor, the panel said.

Since that ruling, the high court “has expressly refused five times to reconsider Humphrey’s Executor, including as recently as 2021,” the panel said.

Circuit Judge Neomi Rao filed a dissenting opinion.

Rao said that in this case, after the president fired Slaughter, the district court held the firing was unlawful and ordered her reinstated, along with “a sweeping permanent injunction that … ordered everyone at the agency to treat the officer as if she were never removed by the President.”

In “two virtually identical cases,” the Supreme Court has put similar injunctions on hold, she said.

Rao was referring to Trump v. Boyle, in which the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s firing of three Biden appointees at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In Trump v. Wilcox, the high court upheld Trump’s firing of Biden appointees at the Merit Systems Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board.

Even though Slaughter is an FTC member and Humphrey’s Executor imposes restrictions on removing FTC members, Rao said she supported the Trump administration’s position in this case.

Rao said the commission “exercises significant executive power,” and other factors also favor the government.

In Trump v. Wilcox, the Supreme Court ruled for the Trump administration, saying the government “faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty,” she said.

Rao said she would have stayed the district court’s order because the D.C. Circuit Court is required to exercise its discretion in accordance with the Supreme Court’s directives.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Sept. 3, 2025, in The Epoch Times. It was updated Sept. 4, 2025.