• by Wendy Davis , 8 hours ago

President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to strike down a lower court ruling that reinstated Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter to the agency.

Lower court judges "cannot compel reinstatement of agency heads and allow them to purport to exercise executive power when the President has determined they should exercise none," U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer argues in an emergency petition filed late Thursday.

The administration's request comes two days after an appellate panel said in a 2-1 ruling that Slaughter should be reinstated to the FTC.

Trump first attempted to oust Slaughter and Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya in March, saying in a letter to them: "Your continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities."

The move left the five-member agency with just three commissioners -- all Republicans.

Slaughter sued for reinstatement and a district court judge and panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with her.

The judges who voted in favor of reinstatement said a 90-year-old Supreme Court case known as 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.

U.S. District Court Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington, D.C. ruled earlier this year that Trump's ouster of Slaughter was "blatantly unlawful" in light of the ruling in Humphrey's Executor.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that AliKhan in a 2-1 decision, writing: "Humphrey’s Executor controls this case and binds this court."

The Solicitor General is now arguing to the Supreme Court that more recent decisions -- including its May ruling halting the reinstatement of Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board, and Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection -- allow him to oust Slaughter.

"Under this Court’s cases, the President must be able to remove, at will, members of multimember commissions that exercise substantial executive power," the Solicitor General writes.

Slaughter said Wednesday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that she had returned to the FTC and had moved to restore "click to cancel" regulations that were struck down for procedural reasons by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Those rules aimed to enable consumers to easily terminate recurring subscriptions to newspapers, gyms, and other businesses.

"Hope a majority of the Commission will join me -- all Americans deserve to be protected from abusive subscription traps," she tweeted.