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Reporting from Washington
Here’s the latest.
President Trump is once again asking the Supreme Court to expand his power as the justices on Monday consider whether he can fire independent government officials insulated by laws meant to shield them from politics.
The case involves Mr. Trump’s firing of a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission and a landmark decision from 1935, which said that Congress could put limits on the president’s authority to remove some executive branch officials.
Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has fired government watchdogs, leaders of independent agencies and rank-and-file federal workers, drawing multiple legal challenges.
The Supreme Court has generally allowe…
Pinned
Updated
Reporting from Washington
Here’s the latest.
President Trump is once again asking the Supreme Court to expand his power as the justices on Monday consider whether he can fire independent government officials insulated by laws meant to shield them from politics.
The case involves Mr. Trump’s firing of a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission and a landmark decision from 1935, which said that Congress could put limits on the president’s authority to remove some executive branch officials.
Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has fired government watchdogs, leaders of independent agencies and rank-and-file federal workers, drawing multiple legal challenges.
The Supreme Court has generally allowed the firings to take effect through temporary emergency orders. This case is the first opportunity for the court to issue a conclusive ruling on the underlying legal questions of Mr. Trump’s firings.
Here’s what else to know:
No limits: The government’s representative before the court, the solicitor general, D. John Sauer, has taken a maximalist position, arguing presidents can fire leaders of independent agencies for arbitrary reasons. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a member of the court’s liberal minority, says the court should be wary of overturning a 90-year-old precedent that established the very structure of the modern federal government.
Recent rulings: The court’s conservative majority has been receptive to Mr. Trump’s claims that a president should not be forced to delegate authority to agency heads at odds with his agenda.
Broad effects: More than two dozen agencies beyond the Federal Trade Commission could be affected by a ruling in Mr. Trump’s favor. But perhaps not the Federal Reserve.
The F.T.C.: The agency protects consumers from deceptive practices and monopoly power. It is led by five commissioners who serve staggered seven-year terms. The commissioner who brought the case, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, was fired in March.
Executive power: The justices this term are considering a number of cases testing presidential power, including on Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, his effort to end birthright citizenship and whether he can fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board.
Justice Elena Kagan says independent agencies do a lot of legislating and a lot of judging. Giving the president unfettered authority over them, she says, would concentrate “massive unchecked power” in the executive branch, at odds with the separation of powers.
If you are just joining us, the Supreme Court has passed the 30-minute mark in arguments over whether the president has the power to fire a leader of the Federal Trade Commission. Solicitor General D. John Sauer is arguing for the Trump administration.
So far, Sauer has taken a maximalist position, arguing that presidents should have wide powers to be able to fire leaders of independent agencies. The court’s liberal justices have pushed back strongly on this line of argument, asserting that such a broad decision in the president’s favor could dismantle the structure of the government and add massive new power to the presidency.
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President Trump has mused about trying to fire Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, but he has not followed through.Credit...Caroline Gutman for The New York Times
The Supreme Court seems poised to let President Trump fire without cause the leaders of almost every independent agency, despite federal laws requiring him to provide a reason.
But the justices have indicated that the Federal Reserve Board is a special case, a uniquely powerful institution whose independence may require protection.
In May, for instance, the court let Mr. Trump temporarily remove leaders of the Merit Systems Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board. (The case before the court now will determine whether dismissals like those will become permanent.)
“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the president,” the court said in an unsigned opinion, “he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf.”
But the opinion went out of its way to explain why it would not apply to the Fed, whose status was not before the court at that moment. “The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,” the opinion said.
In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said she was “glad to hear this,” even as she questioned “the creation of a bespoke Federal Reserve exception.” The majority, she wrote, was driven by pragmatism rather than principle, adding that its goal was “to reassure the markets.”
In earlier decisions expanding presidential control of independent agencies, the court has also taken pains to protect the Fed.
Writing for the majority in a 2020 decision that said the president was free to fire the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without cause, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the Fed might be able to claim “a special historical status.” In a 2024 dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. likewise said the Fed was “a unique institution with a unique historical background.”
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, made a similar point in a 2009 article in The Minnesota Law Review. “In some situations,” he wrote, “it may be worthwhile to insulate particular agencies from direct presidential oversight or control — the Federal Reserve Board may be one example, due to its power to directly affect the short-term functioning of the U.S. economy by setting interest rates and adjusting the money supply.”
Mr. Trump has mused about trying to fire Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, but he has not followed through. Indeed, no president has sought to remove a member of the Fed board without providing a reason.
But Mr. Trump is trying to fire Lisa D. Cook, a Fed governor, this time asserting he has cause — an allegation that she engaged in mortgage fraud. She has denied wrongdoing. The court has let Ms. Cook keep her job for now, and it will hear arguments in her case next month.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh points to an issue looming in the background of this case — whether the president also has the power to fire leaders of the Federal Reserve Board. Justice Kavanaugh says that he shares “concerns” about whether the Trump administration’s “position would undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve.”
That question, a nod to President Trump’s efforts to remove Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, will be directly in front of the court in January. In that case, Trump has claimed he has “cause” to fire Cook, an allegation of mortgage fraud that she has denied.
In any case, Sauer appeared to try and draw a distinction between the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve, saying that the central bank “follows a distinct historical tradition” and to seemingly agree that the president cannot fire Federal Reserve governors without cause.
An originalist scholar’s ‘bombshell’ questioned Trump’s power to fire officials.
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The Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
The conservative legal movement has for decades insisted that an originalist understanding of the Constitution — that is, an interpretation that looks to how the document was understood at the time of the nation’s founding — demands letting the president remove executive branch officials as he sees fit. That follows, the argument goes, from the “unitary executive theory,” which says the president should have complete control of the executive branch and that congressional efforts to shield the leaders of independent agencies from politics should be forbidden.
In September, though, a leading originalist law professor, Caleb E. Nelson, challenged that conventional wisdom in an article that attracted attention in legal circles and beyond. He wrote that the text of the Constitution and the historical evidence surrounding it in fact grant Congress broad authority to shape the executive branch, including by putting limits on the president’s power to fire people.
“Bombshell!” William Baude, a law professor at the University of Chicago who is also a prominent originalist, wrote on social media after Professor Nelson’s article was published. “Caleb Nelson, one of the most respected originalist scholars in the country, comes out against the unitary executive interpretation” of the Constitution.
Professor Nelson, who teaches at the University of Virginia and served as a law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, has been exceptionally influential. His scholarship has been cited in more than a dozen Supreme Court opinions and by every member of the six-justice conservative majority.
His September article was repeatedly cited by lawyers for Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the member of the Federal Trade Commission whose firing is at issue in Monday’s case, in her main Supreme Court brief. In reply, lawyers for Mr. Trump wrote that Ms. Slaughter’s brief “rehashes objections to the removal power” from a “recent essay by Professor Caleb Nelson.”
Professor Nelson declined an interview request in October, saying in an email that “I fear that I don’t have much to add to what I said in the piece.”
His article acknowledged that the Supreme Court “appears to be moving toward a sweepingly pro-president position.”
Indeed, one of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s signature projects since he joined the court 20 years ago has been to grant the president more power to fire executive officers.
In a majority opinion in 2020, he relied on debates at the first Congress in 1789, saying those lawmakers settled the matter. But Professor Nelson re-examined those same events and wrote that there was no consensus at the time.
Letting the president fire officials “for reasons good or bad,” Professor Nelson wrote, would grant him “an enormous amount of power — more power, I think, than any sensible person should want anyone to have, and more power than any member of the founding generation could have anticipated.”
But the question is not whether allowing limits on the president’s power to fire officials is sensible, Professor Nelson wrote.
“I am an originalist, and if the original meaning of the Constitution compelled this outcome, I would be inclined to agree that the Supreme Court should respect it until the Constitution is amended through the proper processes,” he wrote.
But the textual and historical evidence is “far more equivocal than the current court has been suggesting,” he wrote.
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Solicitor General D. John Sauer is quick to try to carve out the Federal Reserve, saying the administration has not challenged congressional limitations on the president’s power to remove its members.
Justice Sotomayor appears sharply skeptical of the Trump administration’s argument that the president has the power to fire the leaders of independent agencies. “You’re asking us to overturn a case that has been around for over 100, nearly 100 years. Correct?” She added, “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government” and “to take away from Congress its ability” to decide the “government is better structured with some agencies that are independent.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor says the court should be wary of overturning a 90-year-old precedent that established the very structure of the modern federal government.
The early Federal Trade Commission fielded complaints over cigars, soap and even nose shapers.
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Among the disputes handled by the Federal Trade Commission during the early 1930s: a complaint over an advertisement for a nose shaper, a strap-on beauty gadget that claimed to reshape the wearer’s nose, according to a review of the Library of Congress archives.
The modern Federal Trade Commission has cracked down on identity theft, created the National Do Not Call Registry and examined big-tech mergers.
But in the era of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the landmark 1935 Supreme Court precedent at the center of the legal battle over whether President Trump can fire leaders of independent agencies who he says don’t align with his agenda, the disputes were often more a bit more low-tech.
The commission at that time did deal with weighty antitrust cases. But commissioners handled more quotidian disputes as well, including complaints over nose-shaping devices, artificially flavored fruit drinks and underwear, according to a review of the Library of Congress archives of William E. Humphrey, the F.T.C. commissioner whose attempted firing by President Franklin D. Roosevelt led to the unanimous ruling that limited presidential power.
In Mr. Humphrey’s correspondence, he wrote that F.T.C. commissioners received about 45 complaints a month claiming all sorts of unfair business practices.
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The battle between William E. Humphrey, a conservative lawyer who refused to leave his post at the Federal Trade Commission, and Franklin D. Roosevelt has resurfaced in a case the Supreme Court will hear on Monday.Credit...Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress
These complaints covered “almost every imaginable commodity under the sun,” Mr. Humphrey wrote. He described the investigations as covering products and industries that touched Americans “from the cradle to the grave,” citing complaints on everything from baby carriages to tombstones.
“We have cases about everything man eats, drinks, wears or uses, from the perambulator in which he rides — as to whether it is made of wicker, paper or wire; the coffin, as to the character of the wood out of which it is constructed, and even the character of the monument that is placed upon his grave,” Mr. Humphrey said during remarks in 1931 about the commission’s work.
The documents contain descriptions of disputes over the misbranding of cigars (domestic tobacco falsely labeled being from Cuba), cotton advertised as wool and artificially flavored carbonated drinks that claimed to contain real fruit juice. The commissioners wrestled with claims of mislabeled soap and allegations of unfair business practices in the realms of hosiery and haberdashery.
And then there were those nose shapers.
Mr. Humphrey’s files contain a detailed account of a dispute, complete with detailed diagrams, over the nose shapers, strap-on beauty gadgets that claimed to reshape the wearer’s nose. One nose shaper maker had lodged a complaint with the F.T.C., arguing that the maker of a competing nose shaper had published a false and misleading magazine advertisement.
It wasn’t clear how the complaint was resolved.
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Sauer takes a maximalist position, saying presidents can fire leaders of independent agencies for completely arbitrary reasons.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer opened his argument by calling the court’s landmark decision in the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor “an indefensible outlier.” He called the case “a decaying husk with bold and particularly dangerous pretensions” that was “grievously wrong” when it was decided.
Who are the lawyers arguing the F.T.C. case?
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Dean John Sauer, U.S. solicitor general, testifies during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Capitol Hill, in February.Credit...Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The Supreme Court will hear from two lawyers during oral arguments on Monday in the fight over President Trump’s efforts to fire a leader of the Federal Trade Commission.
Here are the lawyers:
D. John Sauer
First up is D. John Sauer, the solicitor general and the Trump administration’s leading advocate before the justices.
Mr. Sauer clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia before returning to his native Missouri, where he worked as the state’s solicitor general and in private practice, developing a reputation as a strident voice for conservative causes. He litigated cases pushing back against same-sex marriage, contraception access and transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports.
He gained national attention as a private lawyer for Mr. Trump, successfully arguing before the Supreme Court that his client could not be criminally charged for actions he took as president during his first term in office.
Mr. Sauer and his team at the solicitor general’s office have had a string of successes before the Supreme Court on the court’s emergency docket, known by critics as the “shadow docket.”
The justices are only now beginning to consider the underlying merits of Mr. Trump’s policies, in cases with full briefings and arguments. In one such case, Mr. Sauer recently asked the justices to uphold Mr. Trump’s emergency tariffs. The court has yet to rule in that matter.
Amit Agarwal
The second lawyer to argue will be Amit Agarwal, who represents Rebecca Slaughter, the former F.T.C. commissioner who was fired by Mr. Trump.
Mr. Agarwal is a special counsel for Protect Democracy, which describes itself as “a cross-ideological nonprofit group dedicated to defeating the authoritarian threat.”
He worked as a law clerk for Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, before Mr. Trump nominated Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Mr. Agarwal also worked as a clerk for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
He was also a federal prosecutor in Florida, then the state’s solicitor general. He taught a class on the separation of powers at Florida State University College of Law, and was a senior counsel on the presidential campaigns of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris.
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The argument just started.
Conservatives on the Supreme Court have for years chipped away at Congress’s power to constrain the president’s authority to fire independent regulators. Chief Justice John G. Roberts G. himself embraced this line of thinking as a young lawyer back in the Reagan administration.
Good morning. The Supreme Court will be hearing arguments today in a case about the legality of President Trump’s decision to fire a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. The case is a major test of a president’s power to fire leaders of independent agencies.
The oral arguments are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., but the actual arguments will likely start a few minutes after. The justices typically hear Supreme Court bar admissions before arguments begin, and they do not air a live audio feed of those. The justices will hear first from Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who is defending the president’s firing of an F.T.C. commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.
What is the Federal Trade Commission?
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The Federal Trade Commission’s first role is to enforce consumer protection law.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times
Monday’s arguments before the Supreme Court concern the Federal Trade Commission, a regulator that polices companies across the U.S. economy. The case involves President Trump’s firing of a Democratic commissioner of the F.T.C. and a decision from 1935, which said that Congress could put limits on the president’s authority to remove leaders of independent agencies.
Created by Congress in 1914, the agency has traditionally been governed by five commissioners — three members of the president’s party and two from another party. The agency’s chair, currently Andrew N. Ferguson, acts as its chief executive, directing a staff of lawyers, economists and technologists.
The agency’s first role is to enforce consumer protection laws. That means filing lawsuits against people and corporations that deceive consumers, target them with misleading advertising or violate their privacy.
In September, for example, the agency settled a lawsuit against Amazon that claimed the company had tricked people into signing up for its Prime subscription service and then made it hard for them to cancel. The company agreed to pay a $1 billion penalty and another $1.5 billion in refunds to consumers. Amazon also said it would stop using the tactics that lured customers into Prime subscriptions.
The F.T.C. also ensures companies are following antitrust laws, which bar abusive monopolies and forbid companies from doing deals that substantially reduce competition in the economy.
This year, the agency lost a lawsuit in which it had accused Meta of snuffing out nascent competitors to its Facebook social network when it bought Instagram and WhatsApp. It also sued Amazon in 2023 over claims the company had squeezed small merchants that sell products on its website. That case is scheduled to go to trial in 2027.
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There are other cases that will test presidential power at the court.
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President Trump announcing tariffs at the White House in April.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
A challenge to President Trump’s firing of Democratic leaders of the Federal Trade Commission is one of a number of cases before the Supreme Court this term that will test the limits of presidential power.
Last month, the justices heard arguments about the legality of Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, a centerpiece of his trade strategy. The court could announce at any time whether the administration has the power to unilaterally impose taxes on imported goods without congressional approval.
In January, the justices will consider whether the president can fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board. In that case, the court has allowed Ms. Cook to remain in her role, signaling that the central bank’s unique history may insulate it from presidential interference.
The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would also hear a landmark dispute over the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, an issue that raises fundamental questions about what it means to be an American. No date has been set for those arguments.
By the time the court’s term ends in June, there could be others.
Which independent agencies could be affected by the Supreme Court case?
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The Federal Trade Commission headquarters in Washington.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times
Just how many federal boards and commissions other than the Federal Trade Commission are protected by laws preventing the president from firing their members at will? Court documents say there are 26. Here’s the list compiled by two law professors, Nicholas R. Bednar and Todd Phillips, who have studied multimember commissions.
Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board | Investigates the causes of chemical spills and other incidents.
Commission on Civil Rights | Informs civil rights policy and enhances enforcement of civil rights laws.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission | * Financial regulator for the U.S. derivatives market.*
Consumer Product Safety Commission | Monitors the safety of consumer products, including by issuing recalls and bans.
Federal Energy Regulation Commission | Regulates the transmission and sale of electricity and natural gas.
Federal Labor Relations Authority | Governs relationships between the government and federal workers.
Federal Maritime Commission | Regulates ocean-borne transportation and the United States Merchant Marines.
Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission | Adjudicates legal disputes and sets penalties arising from disputes involving the Mine Act of 1977.
Federal Trade Commission | Enforces civil antitrust law and protects consumers from deceptive or unfair business practices.
Foreign Claims Settlement Commission | Adjudicates claims by U.S. citizens against foreign governments.
Legal Services Corporation | Funds organizations that provide legal aid to low-income Americans for civil cases.
Merit Systems Protection Board | Adjudicates certain claims by federal workers with an aim to protecting the federal merits system from political interference.
Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority | Operates the Washington region’s two airports, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport.
National Consumer Cooperative Bank | Congressionally chartered bank offering services to cooperatives and social organizations.
National Indian Gaming Commission | Regulates tribal gaming.
National Labor Relations Board | Enforces collective bargaining and labor laws and fights unfair labor practices.
National Mediation Board | Regulates labor-management relations in the railroad and airline industries.
National Transportation Safety Board | Investigates civil transportation accidents.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission | Protects public health and safety in the nuclear energy industry.
Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission | Adjudicates disputes over citations and penalties issued to employers by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Postal Regulatory Commission | Regulates the U.S. postal system.
Puerto Rico Financial Oversight and Management Board | Oversees the finances of Puerto Rico and helps restructure the territory’s public debt.
State Justice Institute | Works to improve state court systems including by awards grants.
U.S. Institute of Peace | Supports finding diplomatic solutions to global conflicts, trains peace negotiators and diplomats and briefs Congress.
U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors | The governing body of the U.S. Postal Service.
The professors also identified four other independent commissions whose membership has also been seen as likely protected by virtue of their responsibilities and structure:
Federal Election Commission | Enforces campaign finance laws and oversees elections.
International Trade Commission | Advises Congress and the executive branch on trade matters, including tariffs.
National Credit Union Administration | Insures credit unions.
Securities and Exchange Commission | Regulates securities markets, brokers and investment advisers.
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Does Trump need a reason to fire leaders of independent agencies?
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Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democrat who has served on the Federal Trade Commission, at her home.Credit...Moriah Ratner for The New York Times
Under federal law, President Trump is free to fire Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a member of the Federal Trade Commission. But he has to provide a reason. Congress has defined sufficient cause to fire a member of the F.T.C. as “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
Mr. Trump says the separation of powers guaranteed by the Constitution forbids Congress to limit his ability to run the executive branch. For that reason, he insists that he can fire Ms. Slaughter and other leaders of independent agencies for any reason — or for no reason at all. Congressional efforts to shield officials from political interference by curbing his ability to fire regulators, he argues, are unconstitutional.
The case the Supreme Court hears Monday will test that proposition.
But how hard would it be for Mr. Trump to simply comply with statutes requiring him to give a reason before firing regulators? The legal terrain is surprisingly uncharted because attempts to remove leaders of independent agencies “for cause” are exceedingly rare.
Federal laws requiring presidents to show cause are, on the other hand, commonplace. More than 30 statutes say that leaders of executive agencies can be removed only for some combination of the same factors cited in the law shielding F.T.C. commissioners like Ms. Slaughter. Another 20 or so, like the one governing the Federal Reserve Board, say only that agency leaders may be removed “for cause,” without elaboration.
The difference may matter. Writing in The Columbia Law Review in 2021, Lev Menand and Jane Manners said that “cause” included not just “inefficiency, neglect of duty and malfeasance” but also a broader category of misdeed that included “immorality, ineligibility, offenses involving moral turpitude and conviction of a crime.”
That means, they wrote, that “the president’s power to remove Federal Reserve governors is greater than it is over many other independent agency heads.”
Similarly, a 2013 article in The Cornell Law Review by Kirti Datla and Richard L. Revesz concluded that the differences between the two standards might be meaningful, and that statutes that allowed appointees to be removed for cause conferred “the weakest protection” from presidential intervention.
That difference will probably not figure in Ms. Slaughter’s case, in which Mr. Trump has offered no reason for her removal. But it may matter in a case to be argued next month, one concerning whether he can fire Lisa Cook, a Fed governor.
That case will not only test whether the Federal Reserve gets special legal protections that other quasi-independent boards and commissions do not, as several of the justices have suggested. It will also deal more directly with what constitutes an adequate reason for a presidential firing. In that case, Mr. Trump has said he has sufficient cause to dismiss Ms. Cook — an accusation of mortgage fraud. She has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing.
Who is Rebecca Slaughter?
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Rebecca Slaughter at her home in Maryland last week. Credit...Moriah Ratner for The New York Times
Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the plaintiff in the lawsuit being considered by the Supreme Court on Monday, spent almost seven years on the Federal Trade Commission before she was removed by President Trump in March.
Ms. Slaughter, a Democrat, was appointed to the commission by Mr. Trump during his first term in 2018. She had previously served as an aide to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader.
Ms. Slaughter briefly became the F.T.C.’s acting chair after former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took office in 2021. During her time in the top job, the agency brought a lawsuit challenging a biotech company’s purchase of a start-up that developed tests to detect cancer.
The case against the company, which tested whether antitrust laws could be applied to nascent parts of the economy, resulted in a long legal battle. It ended with a legal victory for the F.T.C., and the biotech company agreed to divest the start-up in 2023.
Mr. Trump removed Ms. Slaughter from her post in March alongside a second Democrat on the commission, Alvaro Bedoya. The pair sued to challenge their dismissal.
Mr. Bedoya resigned from the agency in June, citing his inability to forfeit an income while the case moved forward. In July, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed his claims as a result.
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The Supreme Court will hear a major test of Trump’s power to fire officials.
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Rebecca Slaughter sued President Trump after he fired her from the Federal Trade Commission in March. Credit...Moriah Ratner for The New York Times
The Supreme Court on Monday will consider whether President Trump can fire independent government officials despite laws meant to protect them from politics, a major test for the justices to determine how far to expand presidential power.
The justices are being asked to overturn a landmark decision from 1935, which said that Congress could put limits on the president’s authority to remove some executive branch officials.
In recent rulings, the court’s conservative majority signaled that it was receptive to Mr. Trump’s claims that a president should not be forced to delegate authority to agency heads at odds with his agenda.
A decision in the president’s favor would call into question the constitutionality of job protections extended to more than two dozen other agencies Congress has charged with protecting consumers, workers and the environment — and potentially upend the fundamental structure of the modern government.
Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has fired government watchdogs, leaders of independent agencies and rank-and-file federal workers, drawing multiple legal challenges.
The Supreme Court has generally allowed the firings to take effect through temporary emergency orders. Monday’s case, involving the Federal Trade Commission, presents the first opportunity for the court to issue a conclusive ruling on the underlying legal questions of Mr. Trump’s firings.
Next month, the justices will separately consider whether the president has the power to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve Board governor. The justices have allowed Ms. Cook to remain in her post for now, signaling that the central bank may be uniquely insulated from presidential interference because of its history.
At issue on Monday is Mr. Trump’s firing in March of Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the F.T.C. The president said he was removing her because she did not align with his agenda, despite a law that says the president can remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” Ms. Slaughter promptly sued.
Congress intentionally created such bipartisan commissions — made up of experts who could not be fired by the president without cause — to ensure that policy decisions would be made free from politics.
The F.T.C., created in 1914, protects consumers from deceptive practices and monopoly power. It is led by five commissioners who serve staggered seven-year terms; no more than three can be members of the same party.
The F.T.C. has been led by only Republicans since March, after Mr. Trump fired a second Democrat, Alvaro Bedoya. After initially challenging his firing, Mr. Bedoya resigned, citing financial pressures.
A district court judge said in July that Ms. Slaughter’s firing was illegal, and in early September, a divided court panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reinstated her.
That court said that a commissioner could not be fired without the required grounds of “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” The panel pointed to the job protections upheld by the 1935 decision that also involved a fired F.T.C. commissioner.
In that decision, Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., the court unanimously upheld removal restrictions for government officials on multimember boards. The justices in that case said President Franklin D. Roosevelt could not remove a member of the F.T.C. merely because of political differences.
But in the last 15 years, the court has repeatedly narrowed that decision to give the president more control over executive officials.
“Since 1789, the Constitution has been understood to empower the president to keep these officers accountable — by removing them from office, if necessary,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in 2010.
More recently, the court found that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional because it did not allow the president to fire its single director without cause. The court allowed the job protections to remain for multimember bodies like the F.T.C.
But in its emergency orders issued this year, the conservative majority has let the president temporarily remove leaders of agencies led by such multimember boards, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
As a result, D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, suggested in court filings that the precedent at issue was already a “dead letter” that should be overruled. Such tenure protections, he told the court in filings, unconstitutionally infringe on the president’s power to run the executive branch.
In response, Ms. Slaughter’s lawyers have told the court that getting rid of the precedent decades later would “profoundly destabilize institutions that are now inextricably intertwined with the fabric of American governance.”