Supreme Court seems likely to back Trump's power to fire independent
agency board members
[December 09, 2025]
By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday seemed likely to expand
presidential control over independent federal agencies, signaling
support for President Donald Trump’s firing of board members.
The court’s conservative majority suggested it would overturn a
unanimous 90-year-old decision that has limited when presidents can fire
agencies’ board members — in part to try to ensure decision making free
of political influence — or leave it with only its shell intact.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the crux of the issue is that the officials
who direct the agencies “are exercising massive power over individual
liberty and billion-dollar industries” without being accountable to
anyone.
Liberal justices warned that a ruling sought by the administration to
overturn the decision known as Humphrey's Executor would give the
president, as Justice Elena Kagan said, “massive unchecked, uncontrolled
power.”
Agencies that have been in place for a century or more also would be
robbed of their expertise, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said.
“So having a President come in and fire all the scientists and the
doctors and the economists and the PhDs and replacing them with
loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best
interest of the citizens of the United States,” Jackson said.
No president before Trump has sought to wrest control of the agencies
that regulate wide swaths of American life, including nuclear energy,
product safety and labor relations. But the six conservatives, including
three appointed by Trump, seemed more concerned about issuing a ruling
that would endure than handing too much power to Trump.
Their rhetoric was reminiscent of the presidential immunity case in 2024
that allowed Trump to avoid prosecution for his efforts to undo the 2020
election results. The court is writing a decision “for the ages,”
Justice Neil Gorsuch said then.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who argued the immunity case for Trump,
defended the president's decision to fire Federal Trade Commission
member Rebecca Slaughter without cause and called on the court to
jettison Humphrey's Executor.
Sauer said the decision “hasn't withstood the test of time” and had
enabled a “headless fourth branch” of government, the administrative
state that conservatives and business interests have been taking aim at
for decades.
Chief Justice John Roberts referred to Humphrey’s Executor as “a dried
husk.”
The conservative side of the court already has signaled support for the
administration's position, over the liberals' objection, by allowing
Slaughter and the board members of other agencies to be removed from
their jobs even as their legal challenges continue.
Members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems
Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission also have
been fired by Trump.
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President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White
House, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree
Nikhinson)
The only officials who have so far survived efforts to remove them
are Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, and Shira Perlmutter, a
copyright official with the Library of Congress. The court has
suggested that it will view the Fed differently from other
independent agencies, and Trump has said he wants her out because of
allegations of mortgage fraud. Cook says she did nothing wrong.
A second question in the Slaughter case could affect Cook. Even if a
firing turns out to be illegal, the court wants to decide whether
judges have the power to reinstate someone.
Gorsuch wrote earlier this year that fired employees who win in
court can likely get back pay, but not reinstatement.
That might affect Cook’s ability to remain in her job. The justices
have seemed wary about the economic uncertainty that might result if
Trump can fire the leaders of the central bank. The court will hear
separate arguments in January about whether Cook can remain in her
job as her court challenge proceeds.
Kavanaugh signaled that he is inclined to side with Cook, describing
as an “end run” the idea that an illegally fired official would only
be entitled to her salary.
Under Roberts' leadership, the court has issued a series of
decisions dating back to 2010 that have steadily whittled away at
laws restricting the president’s ability to fire people.
In 2020, Roberts wrote for the court that “the President’s removal
power is the rule, not the exception” in a decision upholding
Trump’s firing of the head of the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau despite job protections similar to those upheld in Humphrey’s
case.
In the 2024 immunity decision, Roberts included the power to fire
among the president’s “conclusive and preclusive” powers that
Congress lacks the authority to restrict.
The court also was dealing with an FTC member who was fired, by
President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, who preferred his own choice
at an agency that would have a lot to say about the New Deal.
William Humphrey refused Roosevelt's request for his resignation.
After Humphrey died the next year, the person charged with
administering his estate, Humphrey’s executor, sued for back pay.
The justices unanimously upheld the law establishing the FTC and
limiting the president to removing a commissioner only for
“inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
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