The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a sweeping victory on June 29, 2026, allowing him to remove the leaders of independent federal agencies at will.
The 6-3 ruling fell along ideological lines, with the conservative majority finding that “for cause” removal protections for the Federal Trade Commission violated the constitutional separation of powers.
The decision directly enabled Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the FTC, clearing a legal obstacle his administration had fought hard to remove.
In the process, the court voted to overturn Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 precedent that had long protected the independence of federal regulatory agencies from presidential interference.
Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion and left little ambiguity about the scope of the ruling. “If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, the Court overrules it,” Roberts wrote.
The FTC ruling was issued alongside a second decision, also authored by Roberts, concerning the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and Trump’s attempt to remove one of its members.
In a 5-4 decision, the court blocked Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, upholding congressional limits on a president’s power to remove Fed members.
Roberts emphasised the central bank’s unique position in the ruling, noting that the decision on independent agencies did not necessarily extend to the Federal Reserve due to its “distinct historical tradition.”
The two rulings together illustrated a divided legal logic at the court’s conservative majority, granting the executive branch sweeping new powers in one area while drawing a firm line in another.
Critics have noted the tension in Roberts’s reasoning, pointing out that the court effectively decided Humphrey’s Executor is no longer valid law when it comes to consumer protection agencies, but remains intact when protecting the institution most directly tied to financial market stability.
The decisions represent one of the most significant restructurings of executive power over the federal bureaucracy in nearly a century, with consequences for dozens of independent regulatory bodies across the United States government.
Legal observers are now watching closely to see which other agencies may lose their independence protections in the wake of the FTC ruling, and whether further litigation will test the boundaries Roberts appeared to draw around the Federal Reserve.