The Supreme Court's conservative supermajority signaled Dec. 8 it may overrule the 90-year precedent protecting independent agency heads from presidential removal.
At oral argument in *Trump v. Slaughter* on Dec. 8, all six conservative justices signaled a readiness to overrule or sharply curtail *Humphrey's Executor v. United States* (1935), the foundational precedent that shields independent agency heads from at-will presidential removal [1]. The case centers on the Trump administration's termination of Rebecca Slaughter, a sitting Federal Trade Commission commissioner, and turns on whether Congress may limit the President's authority to remove agency officers except for cause [2]. Chief Justice John Roberts, from the bench, described the current FTC as a "dried husk" of the agency that *Humphrey's Executor* originally considered, a framing that suggests the Court views the 90-year-old decision as doctrinally spent [1].
The dispute reached the Supreme Court after Slaughter, one of two FTC commissioners fired by the Trump administration, challenged her removal as unlawful under the for-cause removal protection Congress built into the FTC Act [2]. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued for the government, pressing the Court to adopt a unitary executive theory under which the President retains plenary removal authority over all principal officers [1]. Justice Elena Kagan led the dissenting bloc, pressing Sauer on the structural consequences of eliminating for-cause protections across the regulatory state, but her questions drew limited traction from the conservative majority [1].
The doctrinal stakes extend well beyond the FTC. A ruling overturning or cabining *Humphrey's Executor* would remove statutory for-cause protections at the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and potentially dozens of other multi-member independent bodies [2][3]. Legal scholars have noted that the unitary executive theory advanced by the government, if adopted by the Court in full, could also cast doubt on the removal structures at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors [3].
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has a documented appellate record skeptical of independent agency structures, pressed counsel on whether *Seila Law LLC v. CFPB* (2020) already supplied sufficient precedent to resolve the case without a broader holding [1]. That question may foreshadow an opinion that formally overrules *Humphrey's Executor* on narrow grounds rather than through a sweeping restatement of unitary executive doctrine.
A decision is expected before the end of the Court's term in June 2026 [1][2]. Congressional Democrats have indicated they will pursue legislative responses if the ruling issues as signaled, though any statute re-creating for-cause removal protections would face an immediate constitutional challenge under the anticipated holding [2].
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