• by Wendy Davis , September 22, 2025

The Supreme Court on Monday said it will decide whether the president can expel a Federal Trade Commissioner without cause, and blocked ousted commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter from returning to the agency while the case proceeds.

The court's three liberals dissented.

The order, issued on the court's emergency docket, stemmed from President Donald Trump's ouster of Slaughter and Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya in March. At the time, he said 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 appellate panel sided with her, basing their decisions on the Supreme Court's 1935 decision in the case Humphrey's Executor. The court said in Humphrey's Executor that Franklin D. Roosevelt lacked authority to oust an FTC commissioner except for three reasons set out by Congress -- inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.

U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer then sought an emergency order blocking Slaughter's reinstatement, arguing that more recent Supreme Court 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 Trump to remove agency members for any reason.

Earlier this month, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily granted that request, and asked Slaughter to respond to the administration's petition.

On Monday, a divided court granted the administration's request on a longer-term basis, and also sought briefing from Slaughter and the Justice Department on several questions including whether Humphrey's Executor should be overruled.

Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

"Under existing law, what Congress said goes -- as this Court unanimously decided nearly a century ago," Kagan wrote, referring to the 1935 ruling in Humphrey's Executor.

"Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars," she added. "Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation’s separation of powers."

The Supreme Court plans to hear arguments in December.