The New York Times

Highlights of the Supreme Court Argument on Firing Independent Agency Heads

The court’s conservative majority seemed ready to overturn or strictly limit a landmark decision from 1935 in a case dealing with President Trump’s attempt to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission.

Dec. 8, 2025

Pinned

Ann E. Marimow

Reporting from Washington

The Supreme Court seems ready to give Trump more power to fire independent government officials.

The Supreme Court signaled that it would expand the president’s powers by making it easier for President Trump to fire independent government officials. The court’s conservative majority seemed ready to limit or overturn a landmark decision from 1935 that constrains the president’s authority to remove some executive branch officials.CreditCredit...Al Drago for The New York Times

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to make it easier for President Trump to fire independent government officials despite laws meant to insulate them from political pressure in what would be a major expansion of presidential power.

Hearing a case dealing with Mr. Trump’s attempt to oust a member of the Federal Trade Commission, the court’s conservative majority seemed ready to overturn or strictly limit a landmark decision from 1935. That precedent said Congress could constrain the president’s authority to remove some executive branch officials.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is almost always in the majority in significant cases, said the F.T.C. that opinion shielded 90 years ago looked nothing like the modern commission. Over time, he said, the commission has come to exercise significantly more executive power, an authority the Constitution generally reserves for the president. He referred to the 1935 precedent as “just a dried husk of whatever people used to think it was.”

Even as they appeared receptive to the Trump administration’s maximalist position, several key justices seemed intent on making sure the court’s eventual decision in this case did not threaten the independence of the Federal Reserve. The justices will hear a separate case dealing with Mr. Trump’s attempt to fire a Fed governor in January.

The court’s three liberal justices warned of the far-reaching consequences for the structure of the modern government if the majority sided with the Trump administration in the Federal Trade Commission matter.

A decision in the president’s favor, they said, would call into question the constitutionality of job protections extended to leaders of more than two dozen other bipartisan commissions and boards. Congress intended to protect these agencies from partisan pressures and charged them with protecting consumers, workers and the environment.

Justice Elena Kagan said such a ruling would “put massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the president.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor told the administration’s lawyer that “you’re asking us to destroy the structure of government” and to “take away from Congress its ability to protect its idea that a — the government is better structured with some agencies that are independent.”

In response, D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, said that “the sky will not fall” if the justices give the president this new power. “In fact, our entire government will move toward accountability to the people,” he said.

Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has fired government watchdogs, leaders of independent agencies and rank-and-file federal workers, drawing multiple legal challenges.

The Supreme Court has generally allowed the firings to take effect through temporary emergency orders. Monday’s case presents the first opportunity for the court to issue a conclusive ruling on the underlying legal questions of Mr. Trump’s firings.

Next month, the justices will separately consider whether the president has the power to fire Lisa Cook, a Fed governor. The justices have allowed Ms. Cook to remain in her post for now, signaling that the central bank may be uniquely insulated from presidential interference because of its history.

At issue on Monday was Mr. Trump’s firing in March of Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the F.T.C., who attended the argument and listened intently from the courtroom. Mr. Trump said he was removing her because she did not align with his agenda, despite a law that says the president can remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” Ms. Slaughter promptly sued.

Her lawyer, Amit Agarwal of Protect Democracy, told the justices on Monday that presidents of both parties had long accepted that F.T.C. commissioners could not be removed without good cause in part to ensure regulatory stability.

“Folks in power today may not be in power tomorrow, and you want a structure that will be able to withstand the test of time,” Mr. Agarwal said. He added, “Presidents have understood and appreciated the vital interests of the American people can be served by having constraints on the exercise of power.”

Congress intentionally created such bipartisan commissions — made up of experts who could not be fired by the president without cause — to ensure that policy decisions would be made free from politics.

The F.T.C., created in 1914, protects consumers from deceptive practices and monopoly power. It is led by five commissioners who serve staggered seven-year terms; no more than three can be members of the same party.

The F.T.C. has been led by only Republicans since March, after Mr. Trump fired a second Democrat, Alvaro Bedoya. After initially challenging his firing, Mr. Bedoya resigned, citing financial pressures.

A district court judge said in July that Ms. Slaughter’s firing was illegal, and in early September, a divided court panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reinstated her. The panel pointed to the job protections upheld by the 1935 decision that also involved a fired F.T.C. commissioner.

In that decision, Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., the Supreme Court unanimously upheld removal restrictions for government officials on multimember boards. The justices in that case said President Franklin D. Roosevelt could not remove a member of the F.T.C. merely because of political differences.

But in the last 15 years, the court has repeatedly narrowed that decision to give the president more control over executive officials.

The court found in 2020 that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional because it did not allow the president to fire its single director without cause. The court allowed the job protections to remain for multimember bodies like the F.T.C.

But in its emergency orders issued this year, the conservative majority has let the president temporarily remove leaders of agencies led by such multimember boards, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

As a result, Mr. Sauer told the justices that the precedent at issue “stands as an indefensible outlier” and must be overruled. “It continues to tempt Congress to erect at the heart of our government a headless fourth branch insulated from political accountability and democratic control,” he said.

Throughout the lively two-hour argument, the justices appeared divided along ideological lines with questions that underscored their starkly different visions of the president’s powers and the role and history of independent agencies.

Liberal justices pointed to recent historical scholarship showing that Congress has long had the power to devise such agencies and fill them with nonpartisan experts.

“Congress is saying expertise matters,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said. “So having a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the Ph.D.s, and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything, is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States.”

Conservative justices in turn expressed concern about independent agencies exercising vast power over individuals and billion-dollar industries without being accountable to the president, who has authority over the executive branch.

“I think broad delegations to unaccountable independent agencies raise enormous constitutional and real-world problems for individual liberty,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said.

But it was unclear exactly how the court’s eventual decision would affect agencies beyond the F.T.C. Several justices, including Neil M. Gorsuch and Chief Justice Roberts, were critical of the reasoning in the 1935 decision, which dealt specifically with the trade commission. But, the chief justice said, that does not mean that “the other agencies fall with it as well.”

Still, if the administration prevails, Mr. Agarwal said, “everything is on the chopping block” — warning that would include the independence of the Federal Reserve.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. pushed back on claims that the Trump administration’s legal arguments would lead to “revolutionary results.” Justice Kavanaugh more than once suggested that the court would carve out an exception to preserve the independence of the Federal Reserve based on the central bank’s history.

There were echoes on Monday of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in another major case involving Mr. Trump. The conservative majority’s decision in Trump v. United States gave the president immunity from prosecution for his official actions. But the administration relied on it throughout the argument to bolster its expansive view of presidential power.

Justice Clarence Thomas asked the solicitor general whether there were any limits on the president’s authority to fire leaders of multimember commissions even for arbitrary reasons.

Mr. Sauer responded by invoking the immunity decision.

“No,” he said. “This court in Trump against United States held that the president’s power to remove officers wielding the executive power is conclusive and preclusive.”

Abbie VanSickle and Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting.

Dec. 8, 2025

Aishvarya Kavi

Reporting from the Supreme Court

Though the argument was lengthy and the justices were engaged, the mood inside the courtroom was less contentious than other recent arguments in cases where the court has the potential to expand the president’s powers.

It was also not as well-attended. There were many empty seats and there were no demonstrators outside the Supreme Court.

Dec. 8, 2025

Aishvarya Kavi

Reporting from the Supreme Court

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the fired F.T.C. commissioner and plaintiff in the lawsuit, was in the courtroom during the argument. She appeared to be listening closely, tilting her head to see whichever justice was speaking around the heads of those seated in front of her. She also seemed to be taking copious notes because she often looked down at her lap. (Electronic devices like cellphones aren’t allowed in the room.)

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

As the argument concluded, one thought: The justices’ questions were relentlessly split along partisan lines, with the Republican appointees seeming to side with the administration and the Democratic ones on the other side. Usually, there are at least some surprises.

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the court’s liberals, appears sympathetic to arguments by the lawyer for the fired F.T.C. commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. In response to the justice’s questions about the consequences of allowing a president to fire agency leaders, the lawyer, Amit Agarwal, said “there are real-world risks that are palpable.”

He cited concerns about the Federal Election Commission being under the total control “of a political actor,” as well as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s technical determinations.

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

Agarwal says some agencies — the Federal Election Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commssion — must be insulated from politics.

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

Amit Agarwal, the lawyer representing the fired commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, has drawn a line that seems not to satisfy several of the justices, saying the president must have complete control over criminal prosecutions but not civil actions.

Dec. 8, 2025

Stacy Cowley

Consumer finance reporter

The Sinking Fund Commission has come up several times. Historians and legal scholars regard it as the nation’s first independent agency. Created in 1790 by the first Congress, the five-member commission approved payments to settle America’s Revolutionary War debts.

The commission’s structure was proposed by Alexander Hamilton, who saw it as a way to insulate members from political pressures. The group included some members — like the vice president — who could not be fired at will by the president. Hamilton, then the Treasury secretary, served on the first Sinking Fund Commission alongside Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, his bitter political rival.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has already narrowed the 1935 precedent.

Three Supreme Court justices in robes. — Chief Justice John Roberts, bottom right, wrote in a 2010 opinion that the president’s power generally includes “the authority to remove those who assist him in carrying out his duties.”Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

For more than a decade, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has chipped away at Congress’s power to insulate independent agencies from politics, which lawmakers have historically done by putting limits on the president’s authority to fire their leaders.

Several conservative justices have signaled for years that they were ready to overturn the 1935 precedent — Humphrey’s Executor v. United States — at issue in the case before the court on Monday.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a 2010 opinion in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Oversight Board that the president’s power generally includes “the authority to remove those who assist him in carrying out his duties. Without such power, the president could not be held fully accountable for discharging his own responsibilities.”

During Mr. Trump’s first term in 2020, the court took another step toward expanding the president’s authority to oust independent officials. In a 5-to-4 decision in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the court said the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional because it did not allow the president to fire the director without cause.

But the majority decision distinguished between government agencies run by a single director and those led by multimember commissions that “do not wield substantial executive power.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch said they were eager to go further. The 1935 precedent, Justice Thomas wrote, “poses a direct threat to our constitutional structure and, as a result, the liberty of the American people.”

In its recent emergency orders, the court has also signaled that it is now poised to give the president more direct control over the multimember commissions as well.

“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the president,” the majority said in an unsigned opinion in May, “he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents.”

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

The enormous sweep of last year’s decision granting President Trump substantial immunity from prosecution is apparent in this argument, where there has been repeated reference to that decision’s expansive vision of presidential power.

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

The lawyer for the fired F.T.C. commissioner Rebecca Slaughter argued that a decision by the justices allowing the president the power to fire leaders of independent agencies meant that “everything is on the chopping block.” Justice Alito immediately jumped in, saying that he was skeptical that ruling would lead to such sweeping ramifications.

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danger that is imminent right now that we know will happen.

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

In 2020, in ruling that Congress could not limit the president’s power to fire the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the ruling “does not foreclose Congress from pursuing alternative responses to the problem — for example, converting the CFPB into a multimember agency.”

At today’s argument, conservative justices expressed dismay that such alternatives might be possible.

Dec. 8, 2025

Stacy Cowley

Consumer finance reporter

Planes, trade and nuclear energy: The court weighs the fate of independent regulators.

The Supreme Court building. — The Supreme Court will consider whether President Trump has the power to fire a leader of the Federal Trade Commission, a decision that will have profound consequences for dozens of bipartisan commissions and boards created by Congress.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

In 1790, when America’s first Congress met in New York City, it created the Sinking Fund Commission to manage repayment of the nation’s Revolutionary War debts.

Historians and legal scholars regard the five-member group as the country’s first independent agency, explicitly designed by Congress to operate outside the president’s sole control.

The past and future of such agencies were the central topic at Monday’s Supreme Court argument about whether President Trump has the power to fire a leader of the Federal Trade Commission. The court’s decision will have profound consequences not only for that agency, but also for dozens of other bipartisan commissions and boards created by Congress.

Some are well-known bodies like the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates plane crashes, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the nation’s top securities regulator.

Others are relatively obscure but can wield significant powers. Take the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. The tiny Transportation Department agency draws little notice outside the shipping and maritime industries, but it maintains a key North American trade route that $26 billion a year in cargo traverses.

A brief filed in the Supreme Court case lists 50 boards and commissions that could be affected by the court’s decision. They have one thing in common: Congress mandated that they be run by bipartisan leadership groups.

Those boards typically have an uneven number of members, with staggered terms, all appointed by the president — but the various laws that created them often specify that no more than a bare majority of members can come from the same political party. The intention is to insulate the groups from partisan pressures and to encourage negotiation and consensus building.

And Congress frequently adds an additional safeguard by mandating that leaders can be removed by the president only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” That’s the provision the Supreme Court seems poised to overturn.

In March, President Trump fired the two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission. His administration claims that the Constitution forbids Congress to limit the president’s ability to run the executive branch.

If the Supreme Court upholds the firings, he will still have to replace the two ousted commissioners with appointees who are not Republicans — or leave the spots vacant — but Mr. Trump will be free to select leaders more aligned with his own views.

That potential change, which would upend a legal precedent that has stood for more than 90 years, alarms critics who fear it would undermine the independence and stability Congress sought to give to agencies with bipartisan leadership.

“Removal protections help ensure that presidential influence is exercised in a more consistent manner than it would be through removal and replacement of the entire board at will,” a coalition of 33 former board members of independent federal agencies wrote in a brief filed to the Supreme Court, adding, “The structure of independent agency boards tends to dampen radical shifts.”

Bipartisan leadership boards are especially prevalent at regulatory agencies with significant power over financial affairs and safety issues.

“Why would you want the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to be independent? Well, you don’t want the president firing people for their politics,” said Victoria Nourse, the director of Georgetown Law’s Center on Congress and Democracy. “You want them to be deciding cases based on the physics and their expertise.”

Advocates of multimember commissions argue that those groups operate more deliberatively, especially those stocked with a mix of Democrats and Republicans, than agencies led by a sole director. Forcing officials with diverse views to work collaboratively, the thinking goes, ensures that minority perspectives will be part of the discussion as decisions are made. And it can push regulatory bodies toward compromise positions that temper partisan extremes.

“Every chair in these commissions wants a unanimous decision whenever she or he can,” said Allison Herren Lee, a former S.E.C. commissioner. “It doesn’t always happen, but they try, and that negotiating process almost always produces a better, more balanced rule or decision.”

Ms. Lee, a Democrat, was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2019 and served as the acting chair for the first few months of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s term. “There are always times when the majority just steamrolls, but that’s not the norm,” she said. “And it’s always understood that can be a risky approach to take, because minority commissioners do have tools at their disposal to respond both in the moment and with future issues that arise.”

Those kinds of checks and balances appealed to federal lawmakers stretching as far back as Alexander Hamilton, who proposed the structure the first Congress adopted for the Sinking Fund Commission. He saw it as a way of insulating the commission from political pressure, according to a 2020 article by Christine Kexel Chabot in The Notre Dame Law Review.

The group’s five members included some, like the vice president, who could not be removed at will by the president. And Hamilton himself, then the Treasury secretary, served on the inaugural Sinking Fund Commission alongside Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, his bitter political rival. (The commission disbanded in the 1830s, after the war debt was resolved and the Treasury secretary assumed more direct control of the nation’s spending.)

Rachelle Chong, a Republican, spent three years as a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission during President Bill Clinton’s administration. She sees the removal protections afforded to commissioners as a vital safeguard not only for those officials and their work, but also for the politicians they ultimately serve.

“We can make hard decisions and take the heat for it, whereas the elected politicians can say: ‘Well, I didn’t do it. Those guys did it, and they’re the independent agency,’” she said.

Both Ms. Chong and Ms. Lee — who each signed the former board members’ Supreme Court brief — fear for the stability of regulatory bodies, and the industries they oversee, if those removal protections vanish.

The Federal Reserve is the most prominent and powerful example of an independent agency led by a bipartisan board. The Supreme Court in January will hear arguments on Mr. Trump’s attempt to remove Lisa Cook from the Fed’s board.

But the court’s decision in Monday’s case will affect the boards of many agencies that shape aspects of Americans’ daily lives. They include the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which investigates products that cause injuries and deaths; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; the Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s antitrust watchdog; the National Labor Relations Board and other worker-protection agencies; the Postal Service; and the federal commissions that oversee campaign finance laws, international trade and nuclear safety.

“I think people should be worried,” said Ms. Nourse, the Georgetown Law scholar. “A lot of these independent agencies, Congress creates them to protect the little guy.”

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

The court has ruled that Congress cannot limit the president’s power to fire agencies led by a single official. The question before the court today is if it can insulate members of multi-member commissions from removal.

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

The lawyer who is representing the fired F.T.C. commissioner Rebecca Slaughter is Amit Agarwal, who clerked for the conservative Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and for Justice Kavanaugh when he was a judge on the D.C. Circuit.

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

The justices will now hear from the lawyer representing the fired F.T.C. commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

Solicitor General D. John Sauer says about two dozen agencies will be directly affected by the court’s ruling.

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh is the member of the court most concerned with the practical consequences of the court’s rulings. It is telling, then, he has repeatedly discussed making sure that the court’s eventual decision does not threaten the independence of the Federal Reserve.

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

Justice Kavanaugh expresses doubts about one part of the administration’s argument: that even if the fired commissioner wins, she is not entitled to reinstatement but only to back pay. If that argument were accepted, Kavanaugh says, it could affect the Fed.

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or for the Article — Non-Article III courts.

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

The Trump administration’s lawyer argues that independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission currently “have no boss” and that has created “a power vacuum.” Throughout the oral argument, Solicitor General Sauer has continued to push for a maximalist view of presidential power over leaders of independent agencies.

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

Justice Elena Kagan says independent agencies do a lot of legislating and a lot of judging. Giving the president unfettered authority over them, she says, would concentrate “massive unchecked power” in the executive branch, at odds with the separation of powers.

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when we issue broad delegations,

What will the court’s ruling mean for the Federal Reserve Board?

President Trump has mused about trying to fire Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, but he has not followed through.Credit...Caroline Gutman for The New York Times

The Supreme Court seems poised to let President Trump fire without cause the leaders of almost every independent agency, despite federal laws requiring him to provide a reason.

But the justices have indicated that the Federal Reserve Board is a special case, a uniquely powerful institution whose independence may require protection.

In May, for instance, the court let Mr. Trump temporarily remove leaders of the Merit Systems Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board. (The case before the court now will determine whether dismissals like those will become permanent.)

“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the president,” the court said in an unsigned opinion, “he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf.”

But the opinion went out of its way to explain why it would not apply to the Fed, whose status was not before the court at that moment. “The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,” the opinion said.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said she was “glad to hear this,” even as she questioned “the creation of a bespoke Federal Reserve exception.” The majority, she wrote, was driven by pragmatism rather than principle, adding that its goal was “to reassure the markets.”

In earlier decisions expanding presidential control of independent agencies, the court has also taken pains to protect the Fed.

Writing for the majority in a 2020 decision that said the president was free to fire the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without cause, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the Fed might be able to claim “a special historical status.” In a 2024 dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. likewise said the Fed was “a unique institution with a unique historical background.”

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, made a similar point in a 2009 article in The Minnesota Law Review. “In some situations,” he wrote, “it may be worthwhile to insulate particular agencies from direct presidential oversight or control — the Federal Reserve Board may be one example, due to its power to directly affect the short-term functioning of the U.S. economy by setting interest rates and adjusting the money supply.”

Mr. Trump has mused about trying to fire Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, but he has not followed through. Indeed, no president has sought to remove a member of the Fed board without providing a reason.

But Mr. Trump is trying to fire Lisa D. Cook, a Fed governor, this time asserting he has cause — an allegation that she engaged in mortgage fraud. She has denied wrongdoing. The court has let Ms. Cook keep her job for now, and it will hear arguments in her case next month.

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

Justice Roberts says the Federal Trade Commission shielded 90 years ago by the key precedent looked nothing like the F.T.C. today, which he says exercises enormous executive power.

Video

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

An originalist scholar’s ‘bombshell’ questioned Trump’s power to fire officials.

A large building with trees in front of it is covered in scaffolding. — The Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

The conservative legal movement has for decades insisted that an originalist understanding of the Constitution — that is, an interpretation that looks to how the document was understood at the time of the nation’s founding — demands letting the president remove executive branch officials as he sees fit. That follows, the argument goes, from the “unitary executive theory,” which says the president should have complete control of the executive branch and that congressional efforts to shield the leaders of independent agencies from politics should be forbidden.

In September, though, a leading originalist law professor, Caleb E. Nelson, challenged that conventional wisdom in an article that attracted attention in legal circles and beyond. He wrote that the text of the Constitution and the historical evidence surrounding it in fact grant Congress broad authority to shape the executive branch, including by putting limits on the president’s power to fire people.

“Bombshell!” William Baude, a law professor at the University of Chicago who is also a prominent originalist, wrote on social media after Professor Nelson’s article was published. “Caleb Nelson, one of the most respected originalist scholars in the country, comes out against the unitary executive interpretation” of the Constitution.

Professor Nelson, who teaches at the University of Virginia and served as a law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, has been exceptionally influential. His scholarship has been cited in more than a dozen Supreme Court opinions and by every member of the six-justice conservative majority.

His September article was repeatedly cited by lawyers for Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the member of the Federal Trade Commission whose firing is at issue in Monday’s case, in her main Supreme Court brief. In reply, lawyers for Mr. Trump wrote that Ms. Slaughter’s brief “rehashes objections to the removal power” from a “recent essay by Professor Caleb Nelson.”

Professor Nelson declined an interview request in October, saying in an email that “I fear that I don’t have much to add to what I said in the piece.”

His article acknowledged that the Supreme Court “appears to be moving toward a sweepingly pro-president position.”

Indeed, one of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s signature projects since he joined the court 20 years ago has been to grant the president more power to fire executive officers.

In a majority opinion in 2020, he relied on debates at the first Congress in 1789, saying those lawmakers settled the matter. But Professor Nelson re-examined those same events and wrote that there was no consensus at the time.

Letting the president fire officials “for reasons good or bad,” Professor Nelson wrote, would grant him “an enormous amount of power — more power, I think, than any sensible person should want anyone to have, and more power than any member of the founding generation could have anticipated.”

But the question is not whether allowing limits on the president’s power to fire officials is sensible, Professor Nelson wrote.

“I am an originalist, and if the original meaning of the Constitution compelled this outcome, I would be inclined to agree that the Supreme Court should respect it until the Constitution is amended through the proper processes,” he wrote.

But the textual and historical evidence is “far more equivocal than the current court has been suggesting,” he wrote.

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

Solicitor General D. John Sauer is quick to try to carve out the Federal Reserve, saying the administration has not challenged congressional limitations on the president’s power to remove its members.

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

Justice Sotomayor appears sharply skeptical of the Trump administration’s argument that the president has the power to fire the leaders of independent agencies. “You’re asking us to overturn a case that has been around for over 100, nearly 100 years. Correct?” She added, “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government” and “to take away from Congress its ability” to decide the “government is better structured with some agencies that are independent.”

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“Ninety years, I believe.”

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

Justice Sonia Sotomayor says the court should be wary of overturning a 90-year-old precedent that established the very structure of the modern federal government.

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

The early Federal Trade Commission fielded complaints over cigars, soap and even nose shapers.

Six diagrams of a nose shaper, against a dark background, with the words “Patented May 17, 1921” in the upper-right corner. — Among the disputes handled by the Federal Trade Commission during the early 1930s: a complaint over an advertisement for a nose shaper, a strap-on beauty gadget that claimed to reshape the wearer’s nose, according to a review of the Library of Congress archives.

The modern Federal Trade Commission has cracked down on identity theft, created the National Do Not Call Registry and examined big-tech mergers.

But in the era of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the landmark 1935 Supreme Court precedent at the center of the legal battle over whether President Trump can fire leaders of independent agencies who he says don’t align with his agenda, the disputes were often more a bit more low-tech.

The commission at that time did deal with weighty antitrust cases. But commissioners handled more quotidian disputes as well, including complaints over nose-shaping devices, artificially flavored fruit drinks and underwear, according to a review of the Library of Congress archives of William E. Humphrey, the F.T.C. commissioner whose attempted firing by President Franklin D. Roosevelt led to the unanimous ruling that limited presidential power.

In Mr. Humphrey’s correspondence, he wrote that F.T.C. commissioners received about 45 complaints a month claiming all sorts of unfair business practices.

A black-and-white image of a balding man with a goatee seated while wearing a suit. — The battle between William E. Humphrey, a conservative lawyer who refused to leave his post at the Federal Trade Commission, and Franklin D. Roosevelt has resurfaced in a case the Supreme Court will hear on Monday.Credit...Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress

These complaints covered “almost every imaginable commodity under the sun,” Mr. Humphrey wrote. He described the investigations as covering products and industries that touched Americans “from the cradle to the grave,” citing complaints on everything from baby carriages to tombstones.

“We have cases about everything man eats, drinks, wears or uses, from the perambulator in which he rides — as to whether it is made of wicker, paper or wire; the coffin, as to the character of the wood out of which it is constructed, and even the character of the monument that is placed upon his grave,” Mr. Humphrey said during remarks in 1931 about the commission’s work.

The documents contain descriptions of disputes over the misbranding of cigars (domestic tobacco falsely labeled being from Cuba), cotton advertised as wool and artificially flavored carbonated drinks that claimed to contain real fruit juice. The commissioners wrestled with claims of mislabeled soap and allegations of unfair business practices in the realms of hosiery and haberdashery.

And then there were those nose shapers.

Mr. Humphrey’s files contain a detailed account of a dispute, complete with detailed diagrams, over the nose shapers, strap-on beauty gadgets that claimed to reshape the wearer’s nose. One nose shaper maker had lodged a complaint with the F.T.C., arguing that the maker of a competing nose shaper had published a false and misleading magazine advertisement.

It wasn’t clear how the complaint was resolved.

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

Sauer takes a maximalist position, saying presidents can fire leaders of independent agencies for completely arbitrary reasons.

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on principal officers of the United States who exercise

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

Solicitor General D. John Sauer opened his argument by calling the court’s landmark decision in the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor “an indefensible outlier.” He called the case “a decaying husk with bold and particularly dangerous pretensions” that was “grievously wrong” when it was decided.

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that line of authority.

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

Who are the lawyers arguing the F.T.C. case?

Dean John Sauer, U.S. solicitor general, testifies during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Capitol Hill, in February.Credit...Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Supreme Court will hear from two lawyers during oral arguments on Monday in the fight over President Trump’s efforts to fire a leader of the Federal Trade Commission.

Here are the lawyers:

D. John Sauer

First up is D. John Sauer, the solicitor general and the Trump administration’s leading advocate before the justices.

Mr. Sauer clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia before returning to his native Missouri, where he worked as the state’s solicitor general and in private practice, developing a reputation as a strident voice for conservative causes. He litigated cases pushing back against same-sex marriage, contraception access and transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports.

He gained national attention as a private lawyer for Mr. Trump, successfully arguing before the Supreme Court that his client could not be criminally charged for actions he took as president during his first term in office.

Mr. Sauer and his team at the solicitor general’s office have had a string of successes before the Supreme Court on the court’s emergency docket, known by critics as the “shadow docket.”

The justices are only now beginning to consider the underlying merits of Mr. Trump’s policies, in cases with full briefings and arguments. In one such case, Mr. Sauer recently asked the justices to uphold Mr. Trump’s emergency tariffs. The court has yet to rule in that matter.

Amit Agarwal

The second lawyer to argue will be Amit Agarwal, who represents Rebecca Slaughter, the former F.T.C. commissioner who was fired by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Agarwal is a special counsel for Protect Democracy, which describes itself as “a cross-ideological nonprofit group dedicated to defeating the authoritarian threat.”

He worked as a law clerk for Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, before Mr. Trump nominated Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Mr. Agarwal also worked as a clerk for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

He was also a federal prosecutor in Florida, then the state’s solicitor general. He taught a class on the separation of powers at Florida State University College of Law, and was a senior counsel on the presidential campaigns of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris.

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

The argument just started.

Dec. 8, 2025

Ann Marimow

Supreme Court reporter

Conservatives on the Supreme Court have for years chipped away at Congress’s power to constrain the president’s authority to fire independent regulators. Chief Justice John G. Roberts G. himself embraced this line of thinking as a young lawyer back in the Reagan administration.

Dec. 8, 2025

Abbie VanSickle

Supreme Court reporter

Good morning. The Supreme Court will be hearing arguments today in a case about the legality of President Trump’s decision to fire a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. The case is a major test of a president’s power to fire leaders of independent agencies.

The oral arguments are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., but the actual arguments will likely start a few minutes after. The justices typically hear Supreme Court bar admissions before arguments begin, and they do not air a live audio feed of those. The justices will hear first from Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who is defending the president’s firing of an F.T.C. commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.

Dec. 8, 2025

David McCabe

What is the Federal Trade Commission?

The exterior of the Federal Trade Commission building. A person is running in front of it. — The Federal Trade Commission’s first role is to enforce consumer protection law.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

Monday’s arguments before the Supreme Court concern the Federal Trade Commission, a regulator that polices companies across the U.S. economy. The case involves President Trump’s firing of a Democratic commissioner of the F.T.C. and a decision from 1935, which said that Congress could put limits on the president’s authority to remove leaders of independent agencies.

Created by Congress in 1914, the agency has traditionally been governed by five commissioners — three members of the president’s party and two from another party. The agency’s chair, currently Andrew N. Ferguson, acts as its chief executive, directing a staff of lawyers, economists and technologists.

The agency’s first role is to enforce consumer protection laws. That means filing lawsuits against people and corporations that deceive consumers, target them with misleading advertising or violate their privacy.

In September, for example, the agency settled a lawsuit against Amazon that claimed the company had tricked people into signing up for its Prime subscription service and then made it hard for them to cancel. The company agreed to pay a $1 billion penalty and another $1.5 billion in refunds to consumers. Amazon also said it would stop using the tactics that lured customers into Prime subscriptions.

The F.T.C. also ensures companies are following antitrust laws, which bar abusive monopolies and forbid companies from doing deals that substantially reduce competition in the economy.

This year, the agency lost a lawsuit in which it had accused Meta of snuffing out nascent competitors to its Facebook social network when it bought Instagram and WhatsApp. It also sued Amazon in 2023 over claims the company had squeezed small merchants that sell products on its website. That case is scheduled to go to trial in 2027.

Dec. 8, 2025

Ann E. Marimow

Reporting from Washington

There are other cases that will test presidential power at the court.

President Trump standing at a lectern and holding a large chart. — President Trump announcing tariffs at the White House in April.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

A challenge to President Trump’s firing of Democratic leaders of the Federal Trade Commission is one of a number of cases before the Supreme Court this term that will test the limits of presidential power.

Last month, the justices heard arguments about the legality of Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, a centerpiece of his trade strategy. The court could announce at any time whether the administration has the power to unilaterally impose taxes on imported goods without congressional approval.

In January, the justices will consider whether the president can fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board. In that case, the court has allowed Ms. Cook to remain in her role, signaling that the central bank’s unique history may insulate it from presidential interference.

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would also hear a landmark dispute over the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, an issue that raises fundamental questions about what it means to be an American. No date has been set for those arguments.

By the time the court’s term ends in June, there could be others.

Dec. 8, 2025

The New York Times

Which independent agencies could be affected by the Supreme Court case?

Just how many federal boards and commissions other than the Federal Trade Commission are protected by laws preventing the president from firing their members at will? Court documents say there are 26. Here’s the list compiled by two law professors, Nicholas R. Bednar and Todd Phillips, who have studied multimember commissions.

Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board | Investigates the causes of chemical spills and other incidents.

Commission on Civil Rights | Informs civil rights policy and enhances enforcement of civil rights laws.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission | Financial regulator for the U.S. derivatives market.

Consumer Product Safety Commission | Monitors the safety of consumer products, including by issuing recalls and bans.

Federal Energy Regulation Commission | Regulates the transmission and sale of electricity and natural gas.

Federal Labor Relations Authority | Governs relationships between the government and federal workers.

Federal Maritime Commission | Regulates ocean-borne transportation and the United States Merchant Marines.

Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission | Adjudicates legal disputes and sets penalties arising from disputes involving the Mine Act of 1977.

Federal Trade Commission | Enforces civil antitrust law and protects consumers from deceptive or unfair business practices.

Foreign Claims Settlement Commission | Adjudicates claims by U.S. citizens against foreign governments.

Legal Services Corporation | Funds organizations that provide legal aid to low-income Americans for civil cases.

Merit Systems Protection Board | Adjudicates certain claims by federal workers with an aim to protecting the federal merits system from political interference.

Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority | Operates the Washington region’s two airports, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport.

National Consumer Cooperative Bank | Congressionally chartered bank offering services to cooperatives and social organizations.

National Indian Gaming Commission | Regulates tribal gaming.

National Labor Relations Board | Enforces collective bargaining and labor laws and fights unfair labor practices.

National Mediation Board | Regulates labor-management relations in the railroad and airline industries.

National Transportation Safety Board | Investigates civil transportation accidents.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission | Protects public health and safety in the nuclear energy industry.

Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission | Adjudicates disputes over citations and penalties issued to employers by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Postal Regulatory Commission | Regulates the U.S. postal system.

Puerto Rico Financial Oversight and Management Board | Oversees the finances of Puerto Rico and helps restructure the territory’s public debt.

State Justice Institute | Works to improve state court systems including by awards grants.

U.S. Institute of Peace | Supports finding diplomatic solutions to global conflicts, trains peace negotiators and diplomats and briefs Congress.

U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors | The governing body of the U.S. Postal Service.

The professors also identified four other independent commissions whose membership has also been seen as likely protected by virtue of their responsibilities and structure:

Federal Election Commission | Enforces campaign finance laws and oversees elections.
International Trade Commission | Advises Congress and the executive branch on trade matters, including tariffs.
National Credit Union Administration | Insures credit unions.
Securities and Exchange Commission | Regulates securities markets, brokers and investment advisers.

Dec. 8, 2025

Adam Liptak

Legal affairs reporter

Does Trump need a reason to fire leaders of independent agencies?

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democrat who has served on the Federal Trade Commission, at her home.Credit...Moriah Ratner for The New York Times

Under federal law, President Trump is free to fire Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a member of the Federal Trade Commission. But he has to provide a reason. Congress has defined sufficient cause to fire a member of the F.T.C. as “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

Mr. Trump says the separation of powers guaranteed by the Constitution forbids Congress to limit his ability to run the executive branch. For that reason, he insists that he can fire Ms. Slaughter and other leaders of independent agencies for any reason — or for no reason at all. Congressional efforts to shield officials from political interference by curbing his ability to fire regulators, he argues, are unconstitutional.

The case the Supreme Court hears Monday will test that proposition.

But how hard would it be for Mr. Trump to simply comply with statutes requiring him to give a reason before firing regulators? The legal terrain is surprisingly uncharted because attempts to remove leaders of independent agencies “for cause” are exceedingly rare.

Federal laws requiring presidents to show cause are, on the other hand, commonplace. More than 30 statutes say that leaders of executive agencies can be removed only for some combination of the same factors cited in the law shielding F.T.C. commissioners like Ms. Slaughter. Another 20 or so, like the one governing the Federal Reserve Board, say only that agency leaders may be removed “for cause,” without elaboration.

The difference may matter. Writing in The Columbia Law Review in 2021, Lev Menand and Jane Manners said that “cause” included not just “inefficiency, neglect of duty and malfeasance” but also a broader category of misdeed that included “immorality, ineligibility, offenses involving moral turpitude and conviction of a crime.”

That means, they wrote, that “the president’s power to remove Federal Reserve governors is greater than it is over many other independent agency heads.”

Similarly, a 2013 article in The Cornell Law Review by Kirti Datla and Richard L. Revesz concluded that the differences between the two standards might be meaningful, and that statutes that allowed appointees to be removed for cause conferred “the weakest protection” from presidential intervention.

That difference will probably not figure in Ms. Slaughter’s case, in which Mr. Trump has offered no reason for her removal. But it may matter in a case to be argued next month, one concerning whether he can fire Lisa Cook, a Fed governor.

That case will not only test whether the Federal Reserve gets special legal protections that other quasi-independent boards and commissions do not, as several of the justices have suggested. It will also deal more directly with what constitutes an adequate reason for a presidential firing. In that case, Mr. Trump has said he has sufficient cause to dismiss Ms. Cook — an accusation of mortgage fraud. She has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing.

Dec. 8, 2025

David McCabe

Who is Rebecca Slaughter?

A brown-haired woman wearing a black short-sleeve shirt and red pants standing with her arms behind her. — Rebecca Slaughter at her home in Maryland last week. Credit...Moriah Ratner for The New York Times

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the plaintiff in the lawsuit being considered by the Supreme Court on Monday, spent almost seven years on the Federal Trade Commission before she was removed by President Trump in March.

Ms. Slaughter, a Democrat, was appointed to the commission by Mr. Trump during his first term in 2018. She had previously served as an aide to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader.

Ms. Slaughter briefly became the F.T.C.’s acting chair after former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took office in 2021. During her time in the top job, the agency brought a lawsuit challenging a biotech company’s purchase of a start-up that developed tests to detect cancer.

The case against the company, which tested whether antitrust laws could be applied to nascent parts of the economy, resulted in a long legal battle. It ended with a legal victory for the F.T.C., and the biotech company agreed to divest the start-up in 2023.

Mr. Trump removed Ms. Slaughter from her post in March alongside a second Democrat on the commission, Alvaro Bedoya. The pair sued to challenge their dismissal.

Mr. Bedoya resigned from the agency in June, citing his inability to forfeit an income while the case moved forward. In July, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed his claims as a result.

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