• by Wendy Davis , September 3, 2025

A divided panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter to the agency.

The court's order, issued late Tuesday, comes around six months after President Donald Trump in March ousted Slaughter and Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, leaving the agency without any Democratic members. They both sued for reinstatement, but Bedoya resigned while the matter was pending.

In a 2-1 ruling, the appellate judges said the 90-year-old Supreme Court decision in a case called Humphrey's Executor limits the president's power to fire FTC members. The court ruled in that matter that Franklin D. Roosevelt lacked authority to oust an FTC commissioner except for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.

"Humphrey’s Executor controls this case and binds this court," Judges Patricia Millett and Cornelia Pillard wrote.

Slaughter said late Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter, that she was "eager to get back first thing tomorrow to the work I was entrusted to do on behalf of the American people."

Earlier this year U.S. District Court Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington, D.C. ruled that Trump's ouster of Slaughter was "blatantly unlawful" and ordered her reinstated. 

The administration appealed and sought an emergency stay, arguing that the reinstatement wrongly restricted Trump's ability to control the executive arm of government.

The Justice Department specifically argued that Supreme Court rulings issued more recently than Humphrey's Executor weighed against Slaughter's bid for reinstatement. Among other examples, the government pointed to the Supreme Court's May ruling halting 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, but the Supreme Court stayed those orders, preventing the officials' immediate return to their agencies.

In late July, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit granted the government's request for a short-term emergency stay of AliKhan's order reinstating Slaughter. On Tuesday, the panel dissolved that stay.

"The government is not likely to succeed on appeal because any ruling in its favor from this court would have to defy binding, on-point, and repeatedly preserved Supreme Court precedent. Bucking such precedent is not within this court’s job description," Millett and Pillard wrote.

"Recent developments on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket do not permit this court to do the Supreme Court’s job of reconsidering that precedent," they wrote, adding that Slaughter's lawsuit -- unlike the situation with Wilcox -- "involves the exact same agency, the exact same removal provision, and the same exercises of executive power already addressed by the Supreme Court in Humphrey’s Executor and subsequent decisions, and so is squarely controlled by that precedent."

Circuit Judge Neomi Rao dissented, writing that she would have stayed Slaughter's return to the FTC while the appeal proceeds.

"Even assuming that Slaughter’s removal was unlawful, the district court nonetheless lacked the power to issue the injunction," Rao wrote, adding that the injunction "interferes with the President’s exclusive powers."

"By ordering the remaining FTC Commissioners and their subordinates to treat Slaughter as though she is still in office, the district court expressly orders them to disregard the President’s directive," Rao wrote.