The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on June 29 that President Trump acted lawfully when he fired Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, and in doing so, the justices dismantled a 1935 precedent that had shielded the heads of independent federal agencies from presidential removal for nearly a century.

The decision in Trump v. Slaughter overturns Humphrey's Executor v. United States, the Roosevelt-era ruling that created a class of federal officers the president could not touch without cause. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. The implications reach far beyond the FTC. Leadership at roughly two dozen multimember agencies, including the SEC, the NLRB, the CFTC, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, now serves at the pleasure of the president.

For a bureaucracy that spent decades operating as what critics called a fourth branch of government, accountable to neither voters nor the White House, the ruling marks a structural shift in how Washington works.

What the Court said

Roberts grounded the majority opinion in the Constitution's vesting of executive power in a single president. As Breitbart reported, the Chief Justice wrote plainly:

"Officers who exercise executive power must remain accountable to the President, and accountability requires the ability to remove them at will."

The New York Post reported additional language from the majority opinion reinforcing that principle:

"Subordinates who exercise the President's power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people."

Justice Neil Gorsuch, in a concurrence, put it more bluntly. As the Washington Examiner noted, Gorsuch wrote: "Independent agencies are not so independent after all."

That one sentence captures the constitutional reality the Court has now recognized. Agencies staffed by commissioners who exercised enormous regulatory power, writing rules, adjudicating disputes, levying fines, did so while claiming immunity from the elected president who nominally oversaw them. The Humphrey's Executor framework made that possible. The Slaughter decision ends it.

A promise ten years in the making

Trump first vowed to "drain the swamp" during his 2016 presidential campaign. The phrase became shorthand for a broader argument: that the permanent federal bureaucracy had grown too powerful, too insulated, and too hostile to the priorities voters elected a president to carry out. The administrative state, as the Daily Caller's Mary Rooke observed, operated with limited accountability, and the legal architecture that propped it up traced directly to Humphrey's Executor.

That 1935 decision arose from Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to fire a Federal Trade Commissioner who opposed his New Deal agenda. The Supreme Court blocked Roosevelt, ruling that Congress could insulate certain agency officials from at-will removal. The precedent stood for 91 years.

Now it doesn't. The Supreme Court's overturning of that 90-year precedent affirms what originalists have argued for decades: the Constitution does not create a shadow executive branch answerable to no one.

The road to Slaughter

The case reached the Court after Trump fired two FTC commissioners. Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter challenged her removal, and the legal battle worked its way up. The core question was whether the "for cause" removal protections that Humphrey's Executor established could survive modern constitutional scrutiny.

Six justices said no. The ruling landed with a force that extended well beyond the FTC. The Washington Examiner reported that the decision affects roughly two dozen multimember agencies, including the NLRB, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, agencies whose leadership had long claimed a kind of quasi-independence from the White House.

The Court had already signaled where it was heading. As National Review reported, an earlier 8-1 emergency stay in Trump v. Wilcox allowed the president to remove members of the NLRB and the Merit Systems Protection Board. Only Justice Kagan dissented. That lopsided margin foreshadowed the final ruling.

In the Wilcox order, the majority wrote:

"Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf."

The Court also noted 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." That framing put the burden squarely on the officials fighting removal, not on the president exercising his constitutional authority.

The Federal Reserve exception

Not every agency head lost protection. In a companion 5-4 ruling, the Court carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve, holding that its governors retain "for cause" removal protections. The majority cited the Fed's unique historical lineage and the long tradition of central bank independence in the United States.

The Wilcox order had previewed this distinction, describing the Federal Reserve as "a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity" not necessarily affected by the broader ruling. That carve-out will likely generate its own legal debate in the years ahead, but for now, the Fed stands apart.

Every other independent agency, however, operates under a new constitutional reality. Elections now carry direct consequences for how those agencies are staffed and directed, a principle the Washington Examiner described as confirming that "elections have real consequences for how executive branch agencies are directed."

Trump's response

The president celebrated the ruling on Truth Social. The New York Post quoted his post:

"BIG WIN just moments ago at the Supreme Court...confirming Presidential Power in our Country to remove Executive Branch Officers."

The fired FTC commissioner has since urged Congress to push back against the expansion of presidential removal authority. That effort will face steep odds. The Court's 6-3 majority rested its holding on the text of the Constitution, not on statutory interpretation that Congress could simply override.

The ruling arrives during a Supreme Court term that has delivered multiple wins for the administration. The justices also recently handed Trump two victories on asylum and Temporary Protected Status, reinforcing executive authority on immigration.

And the Court's willingness to revisit long-settled precedent extends beyond the administrative state. This same term, the justices upheld state bans on transgender athletes in women's sports in another 6-3 decision, signaling a Court prepared to follow constitutional text even when it disrupts decades of institutional habit.

What comes next

The practical consequences of Trump v. Slaughter are enormous. For decades, commissioners at agencies like the SEC, the NLRB, and the CFTC could defy a sitting president's agenda with near-total impunity. Their "for cause" removal protections meant a president could fire them only for misconduct or neglect, not for policy disagreements, not for obstruction, not for slow-walking an administration's priorities.

That shield is gone. A president who wins an election now has the constitutional authority to ensure the people running federal agencies actually carry out the policies voters chose. The bureaucracy answers to the president. The president answers to the voters. That chain of accountability is what the Constitution always envisioned.

Open questions remain. How quickly will the administration move to replace officials at other agencies? Will Congress attempt legislative workarounds? And will future presidents of both parties use this authority as aggressively as the ruling permits?

Those are debates for another day. The constitutional principle is settled.

For ninety-one years, Washington built a bureaucracy that could outlast any president and ignore any election. The Supreme Court just reminded everyone whose name is on the building.