• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, April 15, 2025

More than 250 Democrats in the House and Senate are urging a judge to rule that President Donald Trump lacked authority to fire Federal Trade Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.

Trump's ouster of Bedoya and Slaughter “flies in the face of binding Supreme Court precedent, established practice, and the Constitution's text and history,” 41 Senators and 210 Representatives argue in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Monday with U.S. District Court Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington, D.C.

Their papers come in a battle that began last month, when Trump expelled Bedoya and Slaughter from the FTC, leaving the agency without any Democratic commissioners.

At the time, Trump told the duo via email: “Your continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities. Accordingly, I am removing you from office pursuant to my authority under Article II of the Constitution.”

Bedoya and Slaughter sued over the move, arguing that a president can only fire an FTC commissioner for three reasons -- inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. They are seeking a declaratory judgment that their firing was illegal, and an order reinstating them to the commission.

The FTC was established by Congress as a five-member commission, with each member appointed for a term of seven years and removable only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

Bedoya was confirmed by the Senate in 2022 and his term wasn't set to expire until September 25, 2026. Slaughter joined the FTC in 2018, and was confirmed for a second time in March 2024. Her term wasn't slated to expire until September 2029.

Late last week, Bedoya and Slaughter sought summary judgment in their favor, arguing that the purported firings violate the Supreme Court's 1935 decision in a case called Humphrey's Executor, which also involved a president's attempt to oust an FTC commissioner. The Supreme Court said in that matter that Franklin Roosevelt lacked authority to fire an FTC member without cause.

“Humphrey’s Executor remains good law and controls here,” Bedoya and Slaughter argue. “It follows that the result must be the same for President Trump as it was for President Roosevelt: this court should hold that his attempt to terminate plaintiffs as FTC commissioners without cause is unlawful.”

The lawmakers supporting Bedoya and Slaughter argue that a president can't ignore Congress's determination that commissioners should serve for a fixed number of years.

The FTC is “a prototypical independent agency of the kind that has existed for 150 years,” the lawmakers argue, adding that “multimember independent agencies like the FTC are also fully consonant with the Constitution's original meaning.”

The elected officials add that existing structure of the agency enables the president to appoint the FTC's chair, which in itself gives the president “at least some ability to shape the agency's leadership and agenda.”

The lawmakers signing the brief include Senate Democrats Cory Booker (New Jersey), Richard J. Durbin (Illinois), Chuck Schumer (New York), Maria Cantwell (Washington), Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota).

AliKhan plans to hold a hearing in the matter on May 20.