Trump Administration Defends FTC Commissioner Firings

President Trump and his administration filed a response to a lawsuit claiming that the President went beyond his presidential authority in firing two Federal Trade Commission members without cause. The foundation of President Trump’s response is that the President is allowed to remove “all those who aid the President in carrying out his duties.”

President Trump fired Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya on March 27^th of this year. Slaughter and Bedoya were the only two Democratic FTC Commissioners. They brought a lawsuit against Trump, alleging that his removal of them was unlawful under a 1935 Supreme Court case of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that FTC Commissioners can only be removed for cause. However, Supreme Court rulings since then have indicated that there may be exceptions to the Humphrey’s Executor ruling.

The Court’s ruling in Seila Law v. CFPB indicated that there may be an exception to the Humphrey ruling in holding that it is unconstitutional for an administrative agency to be headed by a single director not removable by the president at will. Many point to the distinction, however, that in Seila Law the agency in question was headed by one director whereas the FTC has multiple commissioners.

The Trump response attacked the ruling in Humphrey’s Executor by saying that much has changed since that case was decided in 1935 including the added decision in cases such as Seila Law and that Humphrey’s Executor is an actually an exception and not the governing law. “The Supreme Court’s characterization of the FTC in [Humphrey’s Executor v. United States] — as primarily a legislative or judicial aid that prepared reports and recommendations for the Congress and the judiciary — bears no resemblance to the FTC today,” President Trump’s response said. “FTC commissioners must therefore be removable at will to ensure they, like the rest of the executive branch, are accountable to the people who elect the president.”

FTC Commissioners Defend Their Position 

Amit Agarwal, the attorney for Slaughter and Bedoya, said that to allow such firings is to against centuries of cases decided by the Supreme Court. He added that the idea that the constitution gives the president unlimited power to fire FTC commissioners is a “radical” one. “In fact, it ignores nearly a century of settled law that limits the circumstances under which a president can remove commissioners,” Agarwal said. “Americans are seeing right now how much damage a president can do by wielding unchecked power over the economy.”

“This isn’t about Democrats vs. Republicans or liberals vs. conservatives — it’s about a stable economy governed by laws rather than political whims,” Agarwal added. “The extraordinary intrusion here is the president’s attempt to give himself a power Congress withheld for good reason.”

Slaughter and Bedoya have received support from most of the Democrats in Congress. Attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia filed an amicus brief in support of the former commissioners, arguing that their dismissals violated federal law, which restricts their removal to instances where cause is demonstrated.