Happy Monday! Get your week started the right way by joining our live blog during today’s oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter. Our conversation will kick off at 9:30 a.m. EST.

SCOTUS Quick Hits

• On Friday, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear oral arguments on President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship. It also took up three other cases, including on jurisdictional issues concerning arbitration and where one can be tried for an offense. For more on these cases, see the On Site section below.
• On Friday, the Trump administration asked the court to pause a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit that would send a dispute over a policy governing speaking engagements by immigration judges back to a federal trial court for fact-finding.
• The court could issue its decision in the interim docket case on President Donald Trump’s effort to deploy the National Guard to Illinois at any time.
• The court will release an order list this morning at 9:30 a.m. EST and announce decisions made at the justices’ private conference on Friday.
• Today, the justices will hear argument in Trump v. Slaughter, on the president’s authority to fire the heads of independent, multi-member federal agencies. As noted above, our live blog will begin at 9:30 a.m. EST. Once the argument ends, look for a live recording of the Advisory Opinions podcast on the SCOTUSblog homepage.
• Tomorrow, the justices will hear argument in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, on whether to further cut back campaign finance limitations.

Morning Reads

• Roberts and Kagan prepare for another showdown on executive power (Joan Biskupic, CNN) — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are expected to be on opposite sides in Trump v. Slaughter, as they have been in several cases on presidential power over the years, according to CNN. “Since his days as a young lawyer in the Ronald Reagan administration, Roberts has argued for vast executive power, including the authority to fire individuals who lead administrative agencies. … Kagan, in contrast, believes the constitutional separation of powers allows Congress to establish and safeguard certain areas of administrative independence.”
• After Supreme Court win, GOP rushes to draw more House maps (Patrick Marley, The Washington Post)(Paywall) — On Thursday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Texas to use its new congressional map in the 2026 elections, “and Republicans across the country took the decision as a sign they could redraw more lines as they seek to retain a fragile majority in the U.S. House next year,” according to The Washington Post. “The next battleground is Indiana,” where the state House approved a new map on Friday, and Florida leaders have also expressed interest in redistricting, although “Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has said the state should wait” until the Supreme Court addresses the future of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais.
• Democrats divided on redistricting in wake of Supreme Court’s Texas ruling (Caroline Vakil, The Hill) — As Republicans push forward with redistricting plans after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Texas’ map, Democrats continue to debate whether to pursue similar efforts in blue states, according to The Hill. “While Virginia Democrats are signaling they’ll move forward with redrawing their congressional lines, Democrats in other states have expressed opposition, posing a challenge for those in the party who want to net as many additional seats as possible before the midterms.”
• Why Costco, other businesses are suing the Trump admin over tariffs (Rachel Barber, USA Today) — Businesses, like Costco, that have filed lawsuits seeking tariff refunds if the Supreme Court strikes down a large share of Trump’s signature tariffs are taking the risk of upsetting customers who support the president and complicating their relationship with the administration. “There’s so much uncertainty right now that the calculation becomes: Is filing a suit worth the incremental certainty that if this action is taken, we are in a better position?” said Drew DeLong, head of corporate statecraft at Kearney Foresight, to USA Today.
• Actually, the Supreme Court Has a Plan (Sarah Isgur, The New York Times)(Paywall) — In a column for The New York Times, Advisory Opinions host and SCOTUSblog editor Sarah Isgur contended that, in Trump v. Slaughter, the court can work to “rebalance the separation of powers in the federal government” if it makes it clear that the president should have control over agencies housed within the executive branch while also reining in “Congress’s bad habit of delegating vast and vague powers to the executive branch.” “The Constitution vests ‘all legislative powers’ in Congress and ‘the executive power’ in the president,” she wrote. “The court is overdue to police those lines and keep the branches separated.”

A Closer Look: Humphrey’s Executor v. United States

A 90-year-old Supreme Court decision, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, is in the spotlight as the justices hear argument in Trump v. Slaughter this morning. Slaughter is specifically about the president’s authority to remove a member of the Federal Trade Commission without cause and more broadly about whether Congress can place limits on the president’s authority to fire the heads of independent, multi-member federal agencies. In considering this case, the court is faced with whether to overrule Humphrey’s Executor and thereby increase the power of the executive branch.

Humphrey’s Executor arose out of a dispute between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and William Humphrey, an FTC commissioner who had been appointed by Roosevelt’s predecessor, President Herbert Hoover, to a seven-year term in 1931. After Roosevelt took office in 1933, he twice asked Humphrey to resign. Humphrey refused, and so, a few months later, Roosevelt removed him from office. Humphrey died just over four months after that as he was fighting his removal, and the executor of his estate kept the battle going by asking the Court of Claims for “Humphrey’s salary from the date of his removal until the date of his death,” as Justice Clarence Thomas explained in a 2020 opinion.

The executor’s effort to recover backpay made it to the Supreme Court in 1935, which considered whether the Federal Trade Commission Act’s removal restrictions – it states that commissioners can only be removed “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” – unlawfully limit the president’s executive power.

The court unanimously held that those removal restrictions “are definite and unambiguous” and that it was, therefore, unlawful for Roosevelt to remove Humphrey from office for reasons other than those listed. The court further held that Congress could limit the president’s authority in this context, because the Federal Trade Commission’s “duties are neither political nor executive, but predominantly quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.”

With that memorable description, the court worked to explain why it had diverged from its decision in a 1926 case called Myers v. United States, which said the president could fire a postmaster without getting approval from the Senate, despite a federal law imposing that requirement. The justices drew a distinction between a president’s relationship to the FTC and a president’s relationship to a postmaster, determining that “[a] postmaster is an executive officer restricted to the performance of executive functions,” whereas the FTC is more like a judicial or legislative body.

In Slaughter, the Trump administration contends that the FTC has changed significantly over the past 90 years and now exercises much more executive power than “Humphrey’s Executor attributed to the 1935 FTC.” But the administration also argues that *Humphrey’s Executor *should be overturned altogether, because it places impermissible limits on presidential authority.

We shall see if a majority of the justices agree.

SCOTUS Quote

“Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.”

— Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States

On Site

From Amy Howe

Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Trump’s Challenge to Birthright Citizenship

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments early next year in the challenge to President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States. The announcement came in a brief list of orders from the justices’ private conference on Friday morning. Read Amy’s analysis to understand what’s at stake in the case.

The court also took up three other cases on Friday. Amy highlighted those disputes in a separate post.

Trump Administration Asks Court to Settle Dispute Over Immigration Judges

For the 32nd time since late January, the Trump administration on Friday came to the Supreme Court seeking emergency relief. In a 26-page filing, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to block a ruling by a federal appeals court that sent a dispute over a policy governing speaking engagements by immigration judges back to a federal trial court. Federal law, Sauer argued, makes clear that the trial court lacks the power to consider the group’s claim, because judges are required to challenge the policy through an administrative process. For more on the case, read Amy’s analysis.

Case Preview

Amy Howe on Hamm v. Smith

In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment bars the execution of people who are intellectually disabled. On Wednesday, Dec. 10, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Hamm v. Smith on how and whether courts should assess a defendant’s claim under Atkins when he has taken multiple IQ tests. In her case preview, Amy explored the background of the dispute and the key arguments raised by each side.

Ronald Mann on FS Credit Opportunities Corporation v. Saba Capital Master Fund

The justices will be treading on familiar ground during argument in FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital Master Fund, to take place on Wednesday, Dec. 10. Like many cases the court has heard in the last decade, this one asks the justices to consider whether the federal courts should recognize a federal statute as implying a private right of action (that is, providing the ability for private parties to sue) when the words of the statute do not explicitly authorize it. Ronald Mann previewed the case for SCOTUSblog.

Contributor Corner

The Who’s and What’s of Presidential Power

In his latest Major Questions column, Adam White reflected on the role of presidential power in the tariffs case and the case on President Donald Trump’s authority to fire Democratic leaders of the Federal Trade Commission, and why it shouldn’t be surprising that some justices seemingly hold contradictory views on congressional efforts to limit that power in these two different contexts.

Recommended Citation: Kelsey Dallas, SCOTUStoday for Monday, December 8, SCOTUSblog (Dec. 8, 2025, 9:00 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/12/scotustoday-for-monday-december-8/