• by Wendy Davis , 11 hours ago

The Trump administration on Monday asked a federal appellate court to immediately stay a district court judge's order reinstating Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter to the agency.

"The court’s reinstatement of a principal officer of the United States -- in defiance of recent Supreme Court precedent staying similar reinstatements in other cases -- works a grave harm to the separation of powers and the President’s ability to exercise his authority under the Constitution," the U.S. Department of Justice writes in an emergency motion filed with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The administration's order comes several days after U.S. District Court Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington, D.C. found that Trump's ouster of Slaughter was "blatantly unlawful" and ordered her reinstated.

On Friday, Slaughter posted to X (formerly Twitter) a photo of herself outside the FTC building, with the caption: "Excited to be heading into the office this am! Top of the to-do list: calling a vote on restoring the Click to Cancel Rule. It’s time the FTC gets back to protecting consumers from real abuses like subscription traps that cost Americans countless hours and millions of dollars."

The Justice Department says in its new papers that the reinstatement order "causes irreparable injury" to the government, arguing that the order impinges on Trump's ability to control the executive arm.

The motion comes in a battle that began in February, when Trump purported to fire Democratic commissioners Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, leaving the agency with only Republican members.

Both challenged the ousters, arguing that Congress established the FTC as an independent five-member commission, with each member appointed for a term of seven years and removable only for one of three reasons -- inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. (Bedoya resigned from the FTC while the case was pending.)

Slaughter argued in a motion for summary judgment that her removal from the agency violated the Supreme Court's 1935 decision in a case called Humphrey's Executor, which also involved a president's attempt to remove an FTC commissioner. The Supreme Court said in that matter that Franklin D. Roosevelt lacked authority to fire an FTC member without cause.

AliKhan agreed with Slaughter, ruling that the Supreme Court's opinion in Humphrey's Executor was still good law.

The Trump administration argues in its new request for a stay that more recent cases weigh against Slaughter's bid for reinstatement.

Among other recent cases, the Justice Department points to the Supreme Court's May ruling that prevented the reinstatement of Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board, and Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Both officials sued after Trump ousted them earlier this year. In both cases, lower court judges ordered that the officials be reinstated while their cases proceeded.

In May, the Supreme Court stayed those orders, preventing Wilcox and Harris from returning to their agencies while their lawsuits played out in court.

The stay "reflects our judgment that the government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.