The Supreme Court on Sept. 22 temporarily upheld President Donald Trump’s authority to fire Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member Rebecca Slaughter, and announced it will hear a challenge to a 90-year-old precedent limiting that authority.

Trump’s ousting of Slaughter is part of the president’s ongoing effort to remove some personnel from independent federal agencies whose appointees traditionally have been shielded from termination without cause.

The decision came in an unsigned order that says the justices will consider whether to overturn Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), which upheld a federal law preventing the president from removing FTC members without cause.

Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the new order.

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

Chief Justice John Roberts had issued an administrative stay on Sept. 8 pausing a July 17 ruling by U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan. The judge ruled that Slaughter’s termination was unlawful because it was barred by the Humphrey’s Executor precedent.

In a Sept. 16 brief, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the 1935 precedent no longer prevents FTC removals without cause.

The high court ruled in Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020) that Humphrey’s Executor was concerned with the more modest powers that the FTC had in 1935, not the powers it exercises today, he said.

“Humphrey’s Executor is not a get-out-of-removal-free card for the FTC no matter how much executive power the agency actually exercises.”

In the new order, the Supreme Court said it will hear arguments in December about whether the Humphrey’s Executor precedent should be overturned.

The court directed the litigants to prepare arguments about whether the statute governing the FTC that prevents removal of its members without cause violates the separation of powers, and if it does, whether Humphrey’s Executor should be overturned.

The separation of powers is a constitutional doctrine that divides the government into three branches to prevent any single branch from accumulating too much power.

The court also directed the parties to prepare arguments about “whether a federal court may prevent a person’s removal from public office.”

In her dissenting opinion, Kagan said “everyone agrees” that Congress prohibited the president from removing without cause various members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The FTC statute bars the president from removing members except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” she said.

By issuing repeated stay orders, she said, the Supreme Court’s majority “has handed full control of all of those agencies to the President,” and is allowing him to “extinguish the agencies’ bipartisanship and independence.”

The Supreme Court’s decision to move ahead with oral arguments in this case while it remains pending in lower courts suggests that the majority “may be raring” to reverse Humphrey’s Executor, Kagan said.

“But until the deed is done, Humphrey’s controls, and prevents the majority from giving the President the unlimited removal power Congress denied him,” she said.

The Supreme Court also denied conditional petitions on Sept. 22 that were filed by two members of independent labor boards who were fired without cause by Trump. The two individuals asked the high court to hear their cases alongside the Slaughter case if the court agreed to hear that case.

Former Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris and former National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox filed petitions that the court docketed on Sept. 17.

Harris, a member of a civil service review board, was appointed by Biden in 2022 after Senate confirmation. In 2024, Biden elevated her to the chairmanship of the board. Trump fired her on Feb. 10.

Wilcox was appointed to the National Labor Relations Board by Biden in 2021 after Senate confirmation. She was reappointed in 2023. Under the National Labor Relations Act, the board hears complaints about employers engaged in alleged unfair labor practices. Trump fired her on Jan. 27.

On May 22, the Supreme Court allowed Harris and Wilcox to be removed by blocking orders by two Washington-based federal judges that prevented Trump from firing the two board members before their respective terms expired.

“The stay also reflects our judgment that 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,” the court said.

Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson dissented, citing Humphrey’s Executor.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Sept. 22, 2025, in The Epoch Times.