Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,
The Supreme Court seemed inclined to remove certain limits on President Donald Trump’s power to remove bureaucrats, but oral arguments on Dec. 8 left questions about how far their eventual decision would go in empowering the executive.
The case – Trump v. Slaughter – focused on President Donald Trump’s request to override a legislative barrier to firing members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Trump attempted to fire Rebecca Slaughter, an FTC commissioner, earlier this year without invoking any of the reasons Congress listed in the FTC Act as valid for removing commissioners such as her.
Slaughter then won multiple court battles in an attempt to stave off that termination.
The Dec. 8 arguments, which lasted more than two hours, could serve as a prelude to much larger changes to the nation’s separation of powers.
Besides Slaughter, other officials could be impacted if the Supreme Court takes up Trump’s invitation to overrule a 90-year precedent called Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.
In that case, a unanimous court said that if agencies exercise “quasi-legislative” or “quasi-judicial” power, their officials may receive extra protection from Congress.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer opened arguments by telling the court that it should overrule that decision.
Slaughter’s attorney, Amit Agarwal, accused Sauer of suggesting that the federal government has been wrong for decades in creating and blessing independent agencies like the FTC in prior decades.
While some of the justices seemed skeptical of limits that Slaughter attempted to impose on Trump’s executive authority, many of them indicated concern about overruling such a longstanding precedent.
An eventual decision might overrule Humphrey’s Executor or be more limited to Trump’s removal of Slaughter and officials in similar agencies.
Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that a prior case, Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, had hollowed out the decision in Humphrey’s Executor and indicated that Agarwal should switch to using a different precedent to support his case.
“The one thing Seila Law made pretty clear, I think, is that Humphrey’s Executor is just a dried husk of whatever people used to think it was,” Roberts said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Sauer that he was asking the court to “destroy” the structure of the federal government.
Repeatedly, she pressed him on when the court had overturned such a longstanding and significant precedent.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh similarly asked why no presidents had challenged Humphrey’s view of executive authority for 90 years.
Some of his questioning, however, indicated that he thought predictions of impending chaos were overblown.
Instead, he suggested, ruling in Trump’s favor would entail altering how commissioners are removed rather than invalidating the FTC as a whole.
🚨 BREAKING: Justice Brett Kavanaugh intellectually PUMMELS DEI Justice Ketanji Jackson at the Supreme Court on whether President Trump can fire a Democrat member of the FTC 🔥
JACKSON: I don’t understand why the president gets to control everything and outweigh Congress’… https://t.co/KJpFKPR8iR pic.twitter.com/rf7uI3YXst
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 8, 2025
Kavanaugh also asked Agarwal to address concerns about members of multi-member agencies being insulated from democratic accountability.
Sauer similarly argued “the sky will not fall” if the court limits Congress’s authority.
He pointed to how the court ruled against the protections Congress imposed for the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Seila Law.
How the court views Seila Law, decided in 2020, and others could determine how they handle Slaughter’s firing and the president’s removal power more generally.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett told Sauer the court had seen an “eroding of Humphrey’s Executor over the years,” but also indicated concern about how overruling that precedent would impact the structure of government.
Separation of Powers
During oral argument, Roberts seemed sympathetic to the administration’s argument that the modern FTC was very different than the one before the court in Humphrey’s Executor.
In his majority opinion for Seila Law, Roberts had stated in a footnote that the Supreme Court’s “conclusion that the FTC did not exercise executive power has not withstood the test of time.”
Justice Elena Kagan suggested that Sauer was advocating a view of executive power that lacked reasonable limits.
“Once you’re down this road, it’s a little bit hard to see how you stop,” she said, later noting that multiple agencies and lower-level employees could face easier removal.
Many of the justices’ questions wrestled with how best to balance power between Congress and the president. Given the complexity of assessing each agency’s functions, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested it would be better if Congress were in charge of deciding whether certain positions deserved to have some protection from presidential removal.
By contrast, Justice Clarence Thomas pressed Agarwal on how far Congress could go in limiting presidents’ ability to remove individuals such as heads of the departments of Homeland Security and Commerce.
Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed sympathetic to Sauer’s position. He suggested that the court should go so far as to clarify that Congress cannot delegate its legislative power to the executive branch.
“Is the water warm?” Gorsuch asked.
Separate from whether to overrule Humphrey’s, the court is also considering whether it should rule that judges cannot order the reinstatement of officers removed by the president.
Whatever its decision, the court’s opinion will likely have far-reaching consequences. Multiple legal battles have played out over Trump’s firings of other high-level officials. While the court has offered tentative rulings in those cases, the decision in Slaughter’s case is expected to provide final conclusions of law on this issue.
It’s unclear how this case will impact Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve member Lisa Cook. During oral argument, Sauer indicated her agency may enjoy greater protection and cited recent language the Supreme Court has used in distinguishing the Federal Reserve from other entities.
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