Supreme Court allows Trump to fire — for now — remaining Democrat on FTC

The U.S. Supreme Court allowed President Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, for now while it hears arguments in the case in December.

At issue is whether the president has the authority to dismiss the heads of those agencies that are protected by Congress.

The court’s three liberals — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented. Kagan wrote the court had “all but overturned” the Humphrey’s Executor precedent.

That’s the precedent set in 1935 when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the president could not dismiss FTC commissioners the way he could his own Cabinet or other members of his administration. It said that Congress had created the FTC to perform quasi-judicial, quasi-legislative functions and therefore intended it to be politically independent. That decision has been reaffirmed dozens of times since it was decided 85 years ago.

But more recently, with Trump taking a more aggressive stance toward his executive powers, the Supreme Court has handed him some temporary wins while the cases wind their way through the courts.

A federal judge had previously blocked Slaughter’s firing but Monday’s Supreme Court order reverses that decision.

This story will be updated