WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court announced it will hear arguments on December 8 concerning the legality of President Donald Trump’s firing of a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission.
This major case tests the scope of presidential power over government agencies designed by Congress to be independent.
The court took up the case in September while also allowing Trump to terminate Rebecca Slaughter, who had sued to challenge his action.
It lifted a judge’s order that had shielded Slaughter from being dismissed from the consumer protection and antitrust agency before her term expires in 2029.
The stakes are high as the case could lead to justices overruling a 90-year-old precedent upholding job protections for heads of certain federal agencies.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the order letting Trump remove Slaughter while the case proceeds.
Federal law permits a president to remove FTC commissioners only for cause, such as inefficiency or neglect of duty, but not for policy differences.
Similar protections cover officials at other independent agencies including the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.
Slaughter was one of two Democratic commissioners whom Trump moved to fire in March.
The firings drew sharp criticism from Democratic senators and antimonopoly groups concerned about eliminating opposition to big corporations.
Washington-based US District Judge Loren AliKhan blocked Trump’s firing of Slaughter in July, rejecting arguments that tenure protections unlawfully encroach on presidential power.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit kept the judge’s ruling in place in September.
Lower courts ruled that statutory protections shielding FTC members from removal without cause conform with the US Constitution.
This ruling referenced the 1935 Supreme Court precedent in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.
In that case, the court ruled that a president lacks unfettered power to remove FTC commissioners, faulting Franklin Roosevelt’s firing of a commissioner for policy differences.
The Supreme Court in January will hear separate arguments over Trump’s attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, though justices left her in the post for now.
That case involves the first-ever bid by a president to fire a Fed official as he challenges the central bank’s independence. – Reuters
