US Supreme Court lets Trump remove FTC member for now

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By John Kruzel and Jody Godoy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Donald Trump on Monday to keep a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission away from her post for now, temporarily pausing a judicial order that required the reinstatement of the commissioner who the Republican president has sought to oust. 

The court’s action, known as an administrative stay, gives the justices additional time to consider Trump’s formal request to let him fire Rebecca Slaughter from the consumer protection and antitrust agency prior to her term expiring.

The stay was issued by Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency filings arising in Washington, D.C. Roberts asked Slaughter to file a response by next Monday.

The Justice Department made the request on Thursday after Washington-based U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan blocked Trump’s firing of Slaughter. AliKhan ruled in July that Trump’s attempt to remove Slaughter did not comply with removal protections in federal law. Congress put such tenure protections in place to give certain regulatory agencies a degree of independence from presidential control.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on September 2 in a 2-1 decision upheld the judge’s ruling, prompting the administration’s request to the Supreme Court.

Slaughter said she intends to “see this case through to the end.”

“In the week I was back at the FTC it became even more clear to me that we desperately need the transparency and accountability Congress intended to have at bipartisan independent agencies,” Slaughter said.

An FTC spokesperson declined to comment.

The lower courts ruled that the statutory protections shielding FTC members from being removed without cause conform with the U.S. Constitution in light of a 1935 Supreme Court precedent in a case called Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.

In that case, the court ruled that a president lacks unfettered power to remove FTC commissioners, faulting then-President Franklin Roosevelt’s firing of an FTC commissioner for policy differences.

The administration in its Supreme Court filing argued that “the modern FTC exercises far more substantial powers than the 1935 FTC,” and thus its members can be fired at will by the president.

The court in a similar ruling in May said the Constitution gives the president wide latitude to fire government officials who wield executive power on his behalf.

The administration has repeatedly asked the justices this year to allow implementation of Trump policies impeded by lower courts. The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has sided with the administration in almost every case that it has been called upon to review since Trump returned to the presidency in January.

Slaughter was one of two Democratic commissioners who Trump moved to fire in March. No more than three of the five commissioners can come from the same party, and the FTC has operated since April with three Republicans at the helm.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson has pursued conservative political goals at the agency, including holding a workshop on what it called the dangers of gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, saying the agency would investigate whether employers coordinated diversity, equity and inclusion goals, and telling Google that filtering Republican fundraising emails as spam could be unlawful.

The FTC has also sought to investigate media watchdogs accused by Elon Musk of helping orchestrate advertiser boycotts of his social media platform X, and cleared Omnicom’s $13.5 billion acquisition of rival Interpublic after the companies agreed not to steer advertising spend based on political factors.

Ferguson, who was appointed as a commissioner by Democratic former President Joe Biden last year, often dissented from actions taken by then-FTC Chair Lina Khan, who carried out a liberal political agenda aimed at checking corporate power.

(Reporting by John Kruzel and Jody Godoy; Editing by Will Dunham)