The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in Trump v. Slaughter overturns Humphrey's Executor, letting the president fire independent agency heads at will.
The Supreme Court on June 29, 2026, struck down the for-cause removal protections shielding Federal Trade Commission commissioners, overruling the 91-year-old precedent established in *Humphrey's Executor v. United States* [1]. Writing for a 6-3 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts held that the president possesses the authority to remove FTC commissioners at will, without needing to demonstrate cause [1]. The decision formally validated the Trump administration's earlier removal of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, whose termination triggered the litigation [2].
The case, *Trump v. Slaughter*, arose after the White House removed Slaughter from the commission in defiance of the statutory for-cause protection that has governed multi-member independent agencies since 1935 [1]. The Court took up the dispute as one of its final rulings of the October 2025 term [1]. The case presented a direct vehicle for the Court's conservative supermajority to revisit a precedent that originalist and unitary-executive scholars had long targeted [2].
The majority's holding extends well beyond the FTC. The decision places approximately two dozen multi-member independent agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, within the president's direct removal authority [1]. That structural shift is the ruling's principal constitutional consequence. The unitary executive theory, which posits that all executive power is vested in and exercisable by the president alone, now commands the force of binding precedent across the federal regulatory apparatus [2]. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing in dissent, argued that the majority had granted the president authority the Constitution's text and history do not support [1].
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who had previously written separately in related cases to flag doubts about *Humphrey's Executor*'s continued viability, was among the majority [2]. His alignment with the Roberts opinion signals that the decision reflects a durable coalition rather than a fragile or hedged consensus.
Congress and affected agencies now face the immediate practical question of whether existing statutory for-cause provisions remain enforceable pending legislative revision [2]. Litigation challenging presidential removals at other independent agencies is expected to proceed on an accelerated timeline. Lower federal courts will apply the new framework to pending and anticipated removal disputes, likely generating a second wave of cases that test the ruling's outer boundaries.