| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Court | Supreme Court of the United States |
| Docket | No. 25-332 |
| Decided | June 29, 2026 |
| Vote | 6–3 |
| Majority | Roberts, C.J.; Gorsuch, J. (solo concurrence) |
| Dissent | Sotomayor, J., joined by Kagan and Jackson, JJ. |
| Holding | The FTC Act's for-cause removal protection for commissioners violates the separation of powers; Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935) is overruled |
Trump v. Slaughter is a US Supreme Court case on the president's authority to remove members of independent multi-member agencies. On June 29, 2026, the Court ruled 6–3 that the federal statute barring removal of Federal Trade Commission commissioners except for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office" violates the constitutional separation of powers, overruling the Court's 1934-era precedent Humphrey's Executor v. United States, which had upheld the same provision for 91 years (Source: supremecourt.gov; scotusblog.com). SCOTUSblog described the ruling as giving the president authority over approximately two dozen multi-member agencies Congress had structured as independent.
Background
Rebecca Kelly Slaughter was nominated to a Democratic seat on the five-member FTC by President Trump during his first term and renominated by President Biden in 2023 for a second seven-year term. In 2025, the White House notified Slaughter by letter that she had been "removed from the Federal Trade Commission, effective immediately"; the letter cited none of the statutory for-cause grounds, stating instead that her continued service would be "inconsistent with my Administration's priorities" (Source: scotusblog.com).
Procedural history
Slaughter challenged her removal in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Judge Loren AliKhan ordered her reinstatement, holding that Humphrey's Executor squarely controlled (791 F. Supp. 3d 1 (D.D.C. 2025)). A divided panel of the DC Circuit (Judges Millett and Pillard) declined to stay the reinstatement order, writing that only the Supreme Court could overturn Humphrey's Executor. The Supreme Court then granted the government's stay application in September 2025 over a dissent by Justice Kagan (joined by Sotomayor and Jackson) — effectively permitting the removal while litigation continued — and set the case for argument in December 2025 (Source: scotusblog.com).
Decision
Writing for the majority in a 36-page opinion, Chief Justice Roberts grounded the holding in Article II's vesting of "the executive Power" in the president and the Take Care Clause: officials who exercise the president's power "are subject to removal by him," and neither Congress nor the courts may "saddle him" with officers he cannot work with. Roberts wrote that Humphrey's Executor "was tethered to a highly circumscribed and almost fictional view of the FTC's role" as quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative; the modern FTC "unquestionably exercises executive power" — enforcing and administering some 80 statutes, conducting investigations, adjudicating in-house, and filing civil suits on behalf of the United States (Source: supremecourt.gov).
The majority marked limits on the holding. It did not decide "the fate of officials not before us," and it expressly distinguished the Federal Reserve "to the extent that it follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States." Justice Gorsuch, in a 16-page solo concurrence, argued the Court should go further and "restore legislative and judicial powers to where they belong: in Congress and the courts" (Source: scotusblog.com).
Justice Sotomayor's 49-page dissent, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, argued the majority "distorts the structure of Government to fit the majority's theory of unitary, total executive control," producing "a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before." The dissent stated that dozens of independent commissions "are now likely to become purely executive agencies," naming the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Merit Systems Protection Board (Source: scotusblog.com; npr.org).
Relation to AI policy
The decision reached the FTC as the agency was becoming a central instrument of federal AI policy. Days after the ruling, the FTC published a proposed policy statement — directed by the December 2025 executive order on a national AI policy framework (EO — Trump Federal Preemption of State AI Laws (Dec 11, 2025)) — asserting preemption authority over state AI laws that would require altering "truthful" model outputs (Source: insideaipolicy.com). Under Slaughter, that policy is set by an agency whose members now serve at the president's pleasure. Legislative proposals that would assign new AI functions to the FTC — including Sen. Mark Warner's draft AI AGENT Act (an FTC-led registry of vetted AI agents) and the AI Labeling Act (FTC-enforced disclosure of AI-generated content) — would likewise lodge those functions in an agency under direct presidential control.
Commentators drew opposite institutional lessons. Fathom CEO Andrew Freedman argued in a July 1, 2026 Transformer op-ed that the ruling strengthens the case for accredited independent verification organizations reporting to the Commerce Department's CAISI, since freestanding independent agencies can no longer be insulated from at-will removal (Source: transformernews.ai). The dissent's inclusion of the NRC among affected agencies bears on nuclear licensing for AI data-center power (Nuclear PPAs for AI).
The slip opinion (Trump v. Slaughter, 609 U.S. ___ (2026) — Slip Opinion) holds that "the FTC's for-cause removal provision is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution," reversing and remanding. It first narrows Humphrey's Executor on its own premise — that the agency there "exercises no part of the executive power," which the modern FTC's "vast rulemaking, enforcement, and adjudicatory powers" do not satisfy — and then states: "If anything more is left of Humphrey's, the Court overrules it." The stare decisis analysis finds every factor against retention, calling Humphrey's "for decades… a result in search of a rationale."
On reliance the Court inverts the respondent's argument. Slaughter had argued Congress relied on Humphrey's to create agencies "insulated from presidential control"; the majority answers that "this is precisely the problem," since agencies with "freedom from Presidential oversight (and protection)" are not thereby responsive "only to the people of the United States." Its closing formulation: officers who "exercise the President's power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people."
Roberts, C.J., wrote for Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, with Thomas joining all but Part III-B — the stare decisis discussion, agreement on outcome without full endorsement of the reasoning for discarding precedent. Gorsuch concurred; Sotomayor dissented, joined by Kagan and Jackson. The removals at issue were effected without any statutory cause, the President telling the commissioners their "continued service on the FTC [was] inconsistent with [his] Administration's priorities."
Relationships
- related: Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — the agency whose removal protections were struck down
- related: EO — Trump Federal Preemption of State AI Laws (Dec 11, 2025) — the FTC's AI-preemption role now operates under at-will presidential removal
- related: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) — named in the dissent as likely to lose independent status
- related: NIST CAISI (Center for AI Standards and Innovation) — commentary proposes CAISI-anchored verification as the post-Slaughter oversight architecture
- related: Chatrie v. United States — decided the same day; the term's other major ruling bearing on technology governance