On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Trump v. Slaughter that the president can fire commissioners of independent regulatory agencies without cause. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, overturning a 91-year-old precedent — Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935) — that had shielded agency heads from political removal. The case arose from President Trump's 2025 firing of two Democratic FTC commissioners, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, without explanation. The same day, in a 5-4 ruling in Trump v. Cook, the Court carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve, saying its governors keep their job protection because the Fed has a "unique historical status and role" in the American economy.

1. Presidents Should Have Always Had This Power (Chief Justice John Roberts, Ilya Shapiro at Manhattan Institute, Molly Nixon at Cato)

Roberts and the majority say Humphrey's Executor was the mistake — not this ruling.

Today's FTC looks nothing like the 1935 FTC. Roberts' majority holds that any agency exercising "executive power" — writing binding rules, bringing enforcement actions — is constitutionally subject to presidential control. The 1935 FTC had "very little, if any, executive power" at the time. Today's FTC, SEC, and NLRB wield enormous regulatory authority. Roberts says that's a different situation, requiring a different rule.

Voters can't hold the president accountable for agencies he can't fire. Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, calls the ruling a restoration of constitutional republicanism: without removal power, voters can't hold the president responsible for what agencies do, leaving them to "chase a goulash of insulated mandarins." Molly Nixon, senior fellow in executive power at the Cato Institute, puts it simply: "To remain accountable to the President, those officers must be removable by the President."

It closes an accountability gap, not a power grab. Oliver Dunford, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, argues the ruling doesn't expand what the executive branch can do — it just closes the gap between power and accountability. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the Take Care Clause and Article II's Vesting Clause both require the president to control officers who exercise executive power. Justice Gorsuch, concurring, added a pointed suggestion: Congress should reclaim the legislative powers it has delegated to agencies rather than hiding them behind an independence shield.

2. But These Agencies Were Built to Be Independent (Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky)

The three liberal dissenters say this ends something Congress built deliberately to protect the public.

Bipartisan Congresses built these agencies specifically to stay out of politics. The FTC, SEC, NLRB, EEOC, CFPB, FCC — built over a century to make expertise-based decisions insulated from political cycles. Justice Sotomayor, writing for the dissent, warned these agencies will now be "transformed in ways that those who created them never could have expected."

This could end how the federal government enforces law. Justice Elena Kagan warned it could mean "the end of administrative governance — the ways that the federal government provides services, oversees businesses and enforces the law." Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at oral arguments in December 2025, put it in plainer terms: a president who can fire "all the scientists, and the doctors, and the economists and the PhDs" and replace them with loyalists harms ordinary people, not just the agencies.

Congress lost something too. Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, says "agency independence is now gone." Jeff Powell, a constitutional law professor at Duke Law School, calls the 2026 SCOTUS term "a mixed bag" that leaned "too far towards the president." Critics say the ruling strips Congress's power to structure the executive branch the way it chose — and that this is at least as serious a constitutional problem as the one the majority claims to fix.

3. Still, the Immediate Problem Is Chaos (Donald Kettl, CDF Labor Law, AO Shearman)

The constitutional theory is interesting. The practical problem is that 100 regulators don't know if they have jobs, and the businesses they oversee don't know what rules apply.

Gwynne Wilcox's reinstatement claim is now gone. Trump fired Wilcox, an NLRB member, in early 2025. The DC Circuit reinstated her in April, but the Supreme Court stayed that reinstatement in May — before the Court even decided Slaughter. CDF Labor Law partners Tashayla Billington and Mark Spring write that Slaughter has now "largely eliminated" the constitutional foundation for her underlying reinstatement claim. The NLRB, EEOC, FCC, CPSC, and FERC all face similar uncertainty about their commissioners' status.

The Fed exception creates more legal uncertainty, not less. Adam Schwartz, a partner at AO Shearman, notes that the Court's distinction between the Fed and the FTC isn't based on a principled constitutional rule. It's based on the political consequences of firing a Fed governor. That means every agency that wants the Fed's protection will have to sue for it.

Businesses and workers face sharper policy swings every election cycle. Government scholar Donald Kettl warns the ruling is a "stepping stone" toward at-will firing of all federal employees — a far larger disruption. For businesses regulated by the NLRB and EEOC, CDF Labor Law predicts "faster, more pronounced swings in labor policy between administrations." That means shifting rules on independent contractor status, DEI programs, and disability accommodations. Planning a workforce or a compliance program gets harder when the rules flip every four years.

Where This Lands

Roberts' majority drew a line: agencies that exercise executive power answer to the president; the Federal Reserve doesn't. Critics say that line is politically convenient, not constitutionally principled, and future courts will have to redraw it for every agency that claims uniqueness. For now, roughly 100 commissioners across two dozen agencies are legally exposed. Every agency that wants the Fed's protection will have to sue for it.

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