• by Wendy Davis , October 13, 2025

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to uphold his decision to fire Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, despite a federal law limiting his ability to remove members of the agency.

"Removal is the President’s indispensable tool of control," U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer argues in a brief filed late last week with the court.

"When the President removes executive officers, courts cannot reinstate them and authorize them to wield executive power against the President’s will," the administration adds.

The papers come in a battle dating to March, when President Donald Trump ousted Slaughter and Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, both Democrats, from the five-member agency.

At the time, Trump said in a letter to them: "Your continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities."

Slaughter sued for reinstatement and the lower courts sided with her, basing their decisions on the Supreme Court's 1935 decision in a landmark case known as Humphrey's Executor. The court ruled in that matter 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.

Trump appealed to the Supreme Court, which stayed the lower court orders last month on an emergency basis, halting Slaughter's return to the agency.

The administration is now asking the court to overrule Humphrey's Executor, arguing that the 90-year-old decision was "egregiously wrong from the start,” quoting the phrase used by Justice Samuel Alito when the court overturned Roe v. Wade -- the 1973 decision establishing the constitutional right to abortion.

"Humphrey’s Executor grievously erred in holding that the President could not remove FTC Commissioners at will," Sauer writes.

He adds that the 1935 case was "poorly reasoned," conflicts with Article II of the Constitution, which sets out the president's powers, arguing that the ruling led to the growth of the "administrative state."

"Congress took Humphrey’s Executor and ran with it, creating more independent agencies that exercise executive power even as removal protections keep them outside the President’s control," the administration argues.

"Such agencies regulate innumerable aspects of modern life, including lending terms, union recognition, nuclear waste, furniture anchoring, telemarketing calls, and employment disputes --among many others," the administration says, adding: "They issue binding rules, adjudicate claims that businesses and individuals have violated the law, investigate wrongdoing, and bring civil suits seeking substantial fines. Today, everyone agrees those powers are executive. Yet statutory removal restrictions stop the President from superintending agency heads who wield those powers."

The Solicitor General also argues that the FTC wields more power now than in 1935, when Humphrey's Executor was issued.

"Today, the FTC may file civil suits seeking monetary penalties, injunctions, and other relief," the administration writes.

"The FTC may make substantive rules, including rules defining unfair or deceptive acts and practices," Sauer continues, adding that the agency's investigative powers have expanded in the last 90 years.

Slaughter is expected to respond to the administration's arguments by November 7.