Supreme Court Overrules Humphrey's Executor in Trump v. Slaughter, Ending FTC Commissioners' For-Cause Protection
The 6-3 ruling lets presidents fire FTC commissioners at will, reshaping the agency that leads U.S. privacy and AI enforcement.
Overview
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2026, ruled 6-3 that the President can remove commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission at will, overturning the 1935 precedent that had shielded the heads of independent agencies from being fired without cause, according to CBS News. The decision in Trump v. Slaughter, docketed as No. 25-332, upholds President Trump’s removal of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter and dismantles a structural protection that has defined how the FTC operates since the New Deal, as reported by SCOTUSblog. Because the FTC is the federal government’s principal enforcer of consumer-protection, privacy, and emerging AI rules, the ruling reaches well beyond a single personnel dispute.
What We Know
The Court overturned its decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the 1935 ruling that was 91 years old at the time of this decision and had upheld statutory for-cause removal protections for commissioners of independent agencies, according to CBS News. That precedent rested on the FTC Act’s provision barring the President from removing a commissioner except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” — the exact statutory language the Court struck down, as reported by SCOTUSblog.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, according to SCOTUSblog. Roberts concluded that the earlier decision was “tethered to a highly circumscribed and almost fictional view of the FTC’s role,” and reasoned that because “the FTC unquestionably exercises executive power,” the President must be able to control it, per SCOTUSblog. In the majority’s framing, “Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him,” according to CBS News — a formulation the opinion continued with the observation that “The President must have the assistance of officers he can trust,” as reported by the IAPP.
The case arose after the Trump administration told Slaughter she had been “removed from the Federal Trade Commission, effective immediately,” adding that her continued service would be “inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities,” according to SCOTUSblog.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, per SCOTUSblog. Sotomayor warned that the majority’s approach “distorts the structure of Government to fit the majority’s theory of unitary, total executive control,” according to SCOTUSblog, and wrote that “Dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies,” according to CBS News.
The ruling’s reach extends past the FTC. More than two dozen multi-member independent agencies are likely affected, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board, according to CBS News. The Court carved out the central bank, stating that the ruling “does not implicate the constitutionality of the Fed’s removal restrictions,” preserving protections for Federal Reserve Board members, per CBS News. Roberts separately noted that the Federal Reserve might qualify for removal restrictions “to the extent that it follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks,” according to SCOTUSblog.
Slaughter, whose firing the Court upheld, said she was shocked that the Court overturned “a unanimous, 91-year-old precedent,” according to the IAPP.
Why It Matters for Tech
The FTC is the primary federal agency policing data privacy, deceptive practices, and — increasingly — how companies build and market artificial intelligence. By making commissioners removable at will, the decision enables presidential control over the FTC’s direction and leadership, with implications for privacy and AI enforcement priorities, according to the IAPP. An agency whose leadership can be replaced whenever it diverges from White House policy is more likely to see its enforcement posture shift with each administration, rather than persist across them.
That matters for the technology sector in concrete ways. The FTC has been the central venue for federal action on children’s privacy, data brokers, algorithmic pricing, and AI-related consumer harms. A commission that no longer enjoys structural insulation from the executive branch may pursue those cases more aggressively or drop them, depending on the priorities of the sitting President — introducing a volatility that companies, plaintiffs, and state regulators must now price in.
What We Don’t Know
The decision resolves the constitutional question of removal but leaves the downstream consequences unsettled. It is not yet clear how quickly the reasoning will be tested against the other independent agencies the ruling appears to touch — the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board among them, per CBS News — or how courts will apply the Federal Reserve carve-out the majority described. Nor is it clear how a differently constituted FTC will exercise its privacy and AI authority in practice. What is settled is the structural change: the for-cause shield that stood for 91 years is gone.