Can the most powerful man in the world direct his own staff? The Supreme Court is about to decide—and it may transform the administrative state in the process.
The justices on Monday heard oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, which got started last March when Trump decided to fire Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission. Slaughter hadn’t committed any malfeasance. Trump simply wanted to tilt the FTC toward his preferred policies by removing a Democrat from the five-member board.
Unfortunately for Trump, a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent called Humphrey’s Executor says that Slaughter could not be fired except for cause. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt fired an FTC commissioner named William Humphrey, a Republican and outspoken critic of the New Deal. Like Slaughter, Humphrey hadn’t committed any malfeasance. Like Trump, Roosevelt simply wanted his FTC commissioners to back his policies.
