A lower court had ordered Trump to reinstate fired FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.
Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked a lower court’s ruling that ordered President Donald Trump to reinstate fired commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
In March, the White House sent Slaughter, a President Joe Biden appointee, a letter stating that she had been removed from the commission because her “continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities.”
However, the Federal Trade Commission Act states that a president can only remove a commissioner for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” In 1935, in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that “illimitable power of removal is not possessed by the President,” and affirmed that a commissioner can only be removed for cause.
Slaughter filed suit and U.S. District Court Judge Loren AliKhan ordered Trump to reinstate her. Trump then went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to ask that AliKhan’s order be stayed, or temporarily blocked, while the case was litigated. In a two to one decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals denied Trump’s request.
“Over the ensuing decades — and fully informed of the substantial executive power exercised by the Commission — the Supreme Court has repeatedly and expressly left Humphrey’s Executor in place, and so precluded Presidents from removing Commissioners at will,” the court ruled. “To grant a stay would be to defy the Supreme Court’s decisions that bind our judgments.
