On Monday, the Supreme Court turned a blind eye to President Donald Trump’s unlawful termination of a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission. In doing so, the court further strengthened the hand of an administration intent on tightening its grip on every aspect of the federal government. Once again, the nation’s highest court used its shadow docket to overturn two lower court rulings with minimal explanation — or, in this case, with no explanation at all. Once again, Trump asked a highly partisan Supreme Court to rubber-stamp a blatantly political action, one that clearly violates the spirit and letter of the law — and the court obliged.
This ruling, however, is bad not only for Trump’s critics but also for the viability of independent agencies. By rewriting the rules for Trump, the court has opened the door for future presidents of both parties to exploit its precedent. This decision signals the beginning of the end of these agencies that were created to protect the interests of the American people, not serve the political whims of whoever occupies the Oval Office.
Allowing a president to fire commissioners or board members who refuse to do his bidding eviscerates an agency’s autonomy.
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent watchdog agency created in 1914 to protect the public from deceptive or unfair business practices. For more than a century, the FTC has sought to be an objective referee of the marketplace by promoting competition, preventing monopolies and stopping scams and frauds. Congress specifically designed the FTC to be bipartisan and independent. The five commissioners have staggered seven-year terms, no more than three can be from the same political party, and they can be removed by the president only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
The only previous time a president attempted to remove an FTC commissioner was in 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt fired William Humphrey — who was appointed by Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover — over policy differences. Humphrey challenged his dismissal, and in the landmark 1935 case of Humphrey’s Executor, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled the restriction on the president’s removal power to be constitutional and declared Humphrey’s termination illegal. The court explained that the president’s power over the executive branch is not without limits and that Congress’ authority to create independent agencies not subject to the president’s control “cannot well be doubted.”
That was then.
In March, Trump fired Democratic commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, whom he himself had appointed in 2018, claiming her service is “inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities.” Slaughter sued, and in July, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan ruled in her favor, citing Humphrey’s nearly identical case from 90 years earlier.
But in between Slaughter’s filing her lawsuit and AliKhan’s ruling, the Supreme Court weakened the independence of other federal agencies. In May, it paused lower court rulings reinstating members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board whom Trump had fired without cause, in violation of the applicable laws. The Supreme Court did not consider the appeals of those rulings — which had been upheld by an appellate court — in its usual manner of extensive briefing and oral argument. Instead, it used its emergency docket — also known as the “shadow docket” — to stop the rulings from being implemented while offering scant accounting of its reasoning. In a two-page ruling (the judicial equivalent of condensing a John Grisham novel into a tweet), the Court’s majority indicated that the for-cause removal restrictions for the NLRB and the MSPB were unconstitutional.
On Monday, only six days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., approved the lower court’s reinstatement of Slaughter’s going into effect, Chief Justice Roberts issued a two-sentence order, with no explanation, that reversed course and permits Slaughter’s removal.
Supreme Court precedent, of course, outlasts any administration.
Humphrey’s Executor is on life support. That presumably means nothing to the majority of Americans, but they will certainly feel the impact of its loss. Congress established many independent agencies with express limits on the president’s removal authority. Examples include the National Transportation Safety Board, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Federal Reserve, just to name a few. (In its May ruling, the Supreme Court’s majority expressly distinguished the Federal Reserve from the NLRB and the MSPB. Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent welcomed that distinction “to avoid imperiling the Fed” but noted it was “out of the blue” because the Fed’s independence rests on the same legal foundation as that of those and other agencies.)
As the Supreme Court explained in Humphrey’s, for-cause removal goes hand in hand with an agency’s independence. Allowing a president to fire commissioners or board members who refuse to do his bidding eviscerates an agency’s autonomy. With Monday’s ruling, the Supreme Court is not merely reinterpreting Humphrey’s to narrow its application for other agencies. It is throwing out the precedent completely, giving nearly limitless power to Trump to force every supposedly independent federal agency to serve his political interests.
We would be naive to expect the demise of agencies’ independence to miraculously reappear after this president leaves office. Supreme Court precedent, of course, outlasts any administration. As the White House swings back and forth between parties, we can expect significant policy changes from different presidents’ handpicked loyalists who are responsible for keeping our highways and skyways running smoothly, setting workplace safety standards and maintaining the stability of our housing finance system, as well as controlling the monetary policy that affects our mortgage payments, fortifies our economy and protects against hyperinflation. Even worse, we could see the extreme politicization of these agencies. Trump supporters who cheer the president’s having absolute authority over (formerly) independent agencies will shudder to think about, for example, the Federal Communications Commission’s enforcing truth-in-advertising rules only against conservative media outlets or the Environmental Protection Agency’s fast-tracking permits and subsidies for renewable energy projects that use union labor. Congress made the FTC independent to insulate it from the “volatile political headwinds that might jeopardize its mission,” as Judge AliKhan wrote in her ruling reinstating Slaughter. That insulation from political pressure promotes independent agencies’ effectiveness, maintains their credibility and ensures that they serve the public, not the president. But this Supreme Court, in egregious acts of what conservatives usually decry as judicial activism, is circumventing Congress’ intent and putting these agencies under the president’s thumb. For nearly a century, for-cause removal protections have helped preserve our constitutional system by balancing power between the legislative and executive branches and protecting critical federal agencies from the political interests of the president. Overturning that precedent does not merely weaken the FTC and other agencies; it fundamentally changes the checks and balances that safeguard our democracy and guarantee our liberty. Placing this new power in the hands of current and future administrations leads to a government in which public accountability is a mirage and partisan loyalty is reality.
Andrew Warren
Andrew Warren is senior counsel at Democracy Defenders Action. He previously was a prosecutor with the U.S. Justice Department and the elected district attorney in Tampa, Florida. 
