President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Sept. 4 to let him fire Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member Rebecca Slaughter after a federal appeals court reinstated her two days before.

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 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.

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

Some lower courts that have rejected Trump’s efforts to fire members of independent federal agencies have cited a 1935 Supreme Court precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor v. United States in their written decisions. That precedent upheld legal limitations Congress imposed on removing members of the FTC, an independent federal agency.

On July 17, U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan ruled that Slaughter’s termination was illegal because it was barred by the Humphrey’s Executor ruling.

AliKhan said at the time that 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.”

“Because ‘it is [the Supreme] Court’s prerogative alone to overrule one of its precedents,’ the court cannot, and will not, fulfill that request,” she said.

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 a federal district court’s ruling allowing Slaughter to remain in her post.

Circuit Judge Neomi Rao dissented from the ruling, saying that the FTC “exercises significant executive power,” and that other factors also favor the government in the case.

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

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

In 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.

In the new emergency application in Trump v. Slaughter, Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the nation’s highest court that it can allow the firing of Slaughter without overturning Humphrey’s Executor.

The Supreme Court ruled in Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020) that Humphrey’s Executor was based on the FTC as it stood in 1935, when it functioned solely as “a legislative or judicial aid” that exercised “no part of the executive power,” Sauer said.

“The modern FTC has amassed considerable executive power” since Humphrey’s Executor, and its power now “equals or exceeds” that of the National Labor Relations Board, Merit Systems Protection Board, and Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The lower courts erred by viewing Humphrey’s Executor as binding while ignoring the Supreme Court’s “equally binding” interpretation of the ruling in Seila Law, he said.

The Supreme Court should intervene in this case because it is “indistinguishable from Wilcox and Boyle,” Sauer said.

The federal government asked the Supreme Court to grant an administrative stay of the D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling while it considers the government’s emergency application in this case. An administrative stay gives the justices more time to consider the application.

The government also asked the court to treat the application as a petition for certiorari, or review, which, if granted, could lead to formal oral arguments in the case.

The application was directed to Chief Justice John Roberts.

It is unclear when the Supreme Court will act.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Sept. 4, 2025, in The Epoch Times.