The US Supreme Court announced Monday that it will rule on the firing of a federal agency head and consider whether to overturn a 90-year-old case that prevents the president from firing Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commissioners without establishing “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
The case involves President Donald Trump’s removal of FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. In March, Slaughter sued the administration, and in July, the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the firing violated the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA), which currently prevents at-will removals of FTC commissioners. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court halted Slaughter’s reinstatement for the course of the appeals process.
In its granted application, the court directed parties to argue whether the FTCA’s firing protections conflict with separation of powers principles and whether federal courts have authority to “prevent a person’s removal from public office.” On the first question, the court will decide whether to overrule the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which upheld removal protections in the FTCA and marked an era of independent federal agency growth during the New Deal.
Justice Elena Kagan, joined by justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, penned a three-page dissent of the granted application, arguing that Congress has clearly expressed its intention to apply a heightened removal standard for FTC commissioners. Kagan wrote that agencies like the FTC are “classic independent agencies—multi-member, bipartisan commissions whose members serve staggered terms and cannot be removed except for good reason.”
Kagan also tied the granted application to a “series” of recent agency-related opinions written by the court in which its conservative majority allowed the president to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission without cause. She criticized the court’s stay on agency reinstatements prior to overruling precedent, arguing:
The majority, stay order by stay order, has handed full control of all those agencies to the President. He may now remove—so says the majority, though Congress said differently—any member he wishes, for any reason or no reason at all. And he may thereby extinguish the agencies’ bipartisanship and independence… [U]ntil the deed is done, Humphrey’s controls, and prevents the majority from giving the President the unlimited removal power Congress denied him. Because the majority’s stay does just that, I respectfully dissent.
The court will hear arguments on the case in December.
-Advertisement-
Grab our latest Magazine, "Chief Wole Olanipekun, CFR, SAN, A man of wide horizons and deep intentions". Get your order fast and stress free.
For more details about Newswire Law&Events Magazine, kindly reach out to us on 08039218044, 09070309355. Email: newswiremagazine@yahoo.co.uk. You will be glad you did
