Supreme Court Expands Presidential Power to Fire Agency Officials, but Shields the Fed
By National Desk | Washington, D.C., July 24, 2026
The Supreme Court ruled June 29 that presidents can fire the heads of most independent federal agencies at will, overturning a 91-year-old precedent in Trump v. Slaughter while simultaneously blocking President Donald Trump from removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in a companion case, Trump v. Cook.
Together, the two rulings mark the most significant reordering of executive branch authority in decades. They hand the White House sweeping new power to reshape agencies that regulate everything from consumer products to labor disputes to nuclear safety, while carving out a narrow exception for the one institution the justices decided is too economically sensitive to touch.
What Happened: Two Rulings, One Morning
The justices released both decisions within hours of each other on a Monday in late June, and both were written by Chief Justice John Roberts. According to reporting from The Nation, the two opinions were literally bound together with a rubber band when the court handed them out to reporters — a small, almost symbolic detail that captured how tightly linked the two cases were in the justices' own reasoning.
In a 6-3 decision, the court struck down a 91-year-old precedent that had prevented presidents from removing members of independent agencies designed to check presidential power. That precedent, Humphrey's Executor v. United States, dated to 1935. The majority opinion was authored by Chief Justice Roberts and joined by Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett, with Justice Thomas joining most of it; Justice Gorsuch also filed a concurrence, while Justice Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson.
The second case broke differently. In the Federal Reserve case, the court sided against Trump by a narrower margin, with Chief Justice Roberts again writing the opinion, joined this time by Justice Kavanaugh and the court's three Democratic-appointed justices, while Justices Thomas and Alito dissented. The result: presidents now have far more latitude to remove officials across the federal bureaucracy, except at the one agency that sets interest rates for the entire economy.
Background: The Long Runway to Overturning Humphrey's Executor
This outcome had been building for months, if not years. In a series of cases over the past 15 years, the Supreme Court moved in a consistently pro-presidential direction, striking down statutory limits on the president's power to remove federal officials. Those decisions signaled that Humphrey's Executor itself was on increasingly thin ice, and in a 2019 concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas had already argued for repudiating what he called the "erroneous precedent" set by that case.
The specific dispute traces back to March 2025. That month, President Trump fired two Democratic-affiliated FTC commissioners, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, and the two sued days later, alleging their removals were unlawful. Slaughter's case became the vehicle for the broader constitutional question. The Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case on December 8, 2025, specifically to consider whether to overturn Humphrey's Executor outright.
Court-watchers saw this coming from further back still. Earlier rulings in 2025 — Trump v. Wilcox, Trump v. Boyle, and emergency orders touching the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission — had already let Trump fire officials from boards once considered politically insulated, foreshadowing where the full court was headed. As Justice Kavanaugh had written in one of those earlier cases, there was "at least a fair prospect" that the court would ultimately narrow or overrule the old precedent entirely.
Inside the Opinions: One Theory, Two Outcomes
The legal doctrine driving the majority is known as the unitary executive theory — the idea that the Constitution vests all executive power in the president alone, leaving no room for agencies designed to operate independently of the White House. Proponents, mostly conservative legal scholars going back to the 1980s, argue that because Article II vests "the executive power" in a single president, that president is entitled to remove any executive branch official at will.
Roberts's opinion in Slaughter leaned squarely into that framework. In language quoted by legal commentators, Roberts wrote that while the Senate decides whether to confirm the officials a president wants to work with, "neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work," and that "subordinates who exercise the president's power are subject to removal by him."
The Cook opinion, released the same day, drew a sharp exception for the central bank. Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence explained that the Federal Reserve "occupies a unique role in the U.S. Government" with responsibility for the stability of the U.S. and world economies — reasoning the majority used to justify treating the Fed differently from every other agency touched by the ruling.
Not everyone found that distinction persuasive. Legal analysts writing for the Yale Journal on Regulation and other outlets have noted that the court's reasoning in the two cases sits in real tension with itself: one opinion says Congress cannot insulate agency heads from the president, while the other says the Fed can remain insulated precisely because Congress built it that way. Even Justice Thomas, who dissented in the Fed case because he thought Cook should have been removable too, pointed out the contradiction between the two rulings' own language.
A Pattern Years in the Making
Neither ruling arrived out of nowhere. The Roberts Court has been chipping away at the administrative state's independence for the better part of a decade, and Monday's decisions read less like a single dramatic reversal than the final step in a long march. Earlier decisions such as Morrison v. Olson in 1988 had actually gone the other way, upholding for-cause removal protections for independent counsels, while later cases involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's leadership structure began chipping at that logic from the opposite direction.
By the time Slaughter reached oral argument, most legal observers considered overturning Humphrey's Executor close to inevitable. Justice Elena Kagan herself had remarked in an earlier case that the conservative majority seemed "raring" to overturn Humphrey's and formally embrace the unitary executive theory — a prediction that turned out to be accurate. What remained genuinely uncertain heading into the Cook case was whether the court would apply that same logic to the Federal Reserve, given the outsized economic stakes of destabilizing the nation's central bank.
That uncertainty is part of why legal commentators have struggled to reconcile the two opinions on doctrinal grounds. One analysis argues that the only way to make sense of the differing outcomes is to conclude the justices understood that applying their own reasoning consistently to the Fed would risk shaking the world economy, and carved out an exception to avoid that outcome rather than working from a clean, unified constitutional theory. Roberts's opinion, for its part, never squarely defines what counts as "executive power" in the first place — a gap critics say leaves the court, rather than Congress, as the ultimate arbiter of which future agencies can claim independence.
The Cook Case: Mortgage Fraud Allegations and a Constitutional Fight
The dispute over Lisa Cook's Federal Reserve seat began separately from the FTC fight but arrived at the Supreme Court on the same day. Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte accused Cook in August 2025 of mortgage fraud, alleging she had claimed two different homes as her primary residence in 2021 to obtain better loan terms, and said he had referred the matter to the Justice Department for criminal review. Trump then attempted to remove Cook "for cause," and she sued, arguing the removal was not justified.
The Supreme Court did not resolve whether the underlying fraud allegations have merit. Instead, the 5-4 decision simply held that Trump's "for cause" firing of Cook could be paused while lower courts continue reviewing it — a result widely read as preserving the Fed's independence from direct presidential interference, at least for now. The court found Trump had not given Cook adequate opportunity to challenge the justification for her firing, even as it declined to rule on the fraud allegations themselves.
Reaction: A Divided Washington
President Trump celebrated the outcome as a historic victory. He hailed the Slaughter ruling as "the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years," framing it as restoring his ability to remove officials who issue regulations out of step with his policy agenda.
Congressional Democrats reacted with alarm, particularly over what the ruling means for agencies that touch ordinary Americans' economic lives. Delaware Senator Chris Coons argued that "the president is not meant to be a dictator or a king, but this Supreme Court continues to give President Trump unchecked power," while warning that the leadership turnover already seen at agencies like the Department of Homeland Security could now spread to bodies that regulate workers, the economy and elections.
Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, raised similar concerns about labor-focused agencies specifically. He warned that "workers across the country rely on independent agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to protect their rights," and that the ruling "creates a pathway for politics to interfere" with those agencies' work.
In her dissent from the bench, Justice Sotomayor offered one of the sharpest warnings about the ruling's scope. She wrote that the decision reshapes the government by converting "dozens of independent commissions" into "purely executive agencies," in her words shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President's hands.
Impact: Which Agencies Are Now Exposed
The practical fallout extends well beyond the Federal Trade Commission. Legal analysis from the law firm Holland & Knight lays out the scope in concrete terms. The firm notes that the ruling eliminates for-cause removal protections for commissioners not just at the FTC, but at the National Labor Relations Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and other similarly structured independent agencies.
Other reporting places the number of affected bodies even higher. One estimate suggests the precedent had, in the decades since 1935, shielded roughly two dozen independent agencies from presidential interference, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Transportation Safety Board. Business-facing analysts are already advising companies to rethink long-term compliance strategy: Holland & Knight's guidance warns that firms should prepare for "more volatile enforcement environments" and "rapid policy reversals between administrations" as agency leadership becomes easier to replace.
Some legal scholars argue the full reach of the decision is still unsettled. A Yale Journal on Regulation analysis frames the next major legal fight as whether Slaughter's at-will removal standard extends beyond agency heads themselves to the rank-and-file civil servants who staff those agencies — a question the court did not directly answer.
Key Facts
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Case names | Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook |
| Decision date | June 29, 2026 |
| Slaughter vote | 6-3, opinion by Chief Justice Roberts |
| Cook vote | 5-4, opinion by Chief Justice Roberts |
| Precedent overturned | Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935), a 91-year-old ruling |
| Officials at the center of the cases | Rebecca Slaughter (FTC) and Lisa Cook (Federal Reserve) |
| Practical effect | President can now fire most independent agency heads at will; Fed governors remain protected pending further litigation |
What Happens Next
The rulings do not close the book on either dispute. Lisa Cook's underlying fight over her Federal Reserve seat continues in the lower courts, where judges will now weigh whether the mortgage fraud allegations against her actually meet the legal standard for "cause." Even though Cook won the immediate battle over the process used to fire her, whether she ultimately keeps her job remains an open question likely to return to the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, agencies across Washington are already adjusting to the new legal reality. With for-cause protections gone at most independent commissions, future administrations of either party will have far more power to replace agency leadership immediately after taking office, rather than waiting out fixed terms. Legal scholars expect follow-on litigation over exactly how far the ruling extends — particularly whether it reaches career civil servants, and whether any other agency besides the Fed can claim a similar carve-out.
Businesses that operate under the jurisdiction of agencies like the FTC, the NLRB and the FCC are already being advised to plan for less predictable regulatory environments. Enforcement priorities that once shifted only gradually, as commissioners rotated off staggered terms, can now change far more abruptly whenever a new administration takes office and moves to replace agency leadership outright. That volatility cuts both ways politically — a future Democratic administration would have exactly the same removal power the current ruling grants Trump, meaning the practical effects of Monday's decisions will likely outlast any single presidency.
For now, the most closely watched fight remains Lisa Cook's. Her legal team is expected to press ahead with arguments that the mortgage fraud allegations against her do not meet the "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance" standard required to remove a sitting Fed governor for cause, while the Justice Department continues reviewing the underlying fraud referral separately. How that plays out could determine not just Cook's own tenure, but how durable the court's Fed carve-out proves to be the next time a president tries to test it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did the Supreme Court rule in Trump v. Slaughter?
The court ruled 6-3 that the president can remove Federal Trade Commission members without cause, overturning the 1935 precedent in Humphrey's Executor v. United States that had protected FTC commissioners and similar officials from removal except for malfeasance, neglect of duty, or inefficiency.
Can President Trump fire the chair or governors of the Federal Reserve?
Not easily, at least for now. In the companion case, Trump v. Cook, the court ruled 5-4 that Trump's attempted removal of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook could be paused while lower courts continue reviewing it, effectively preserving the Fed's independence from the president in the near term.
What was Humphrey's Executor and why did the Supreme Court overturn it?
Humphrey's Executor v. United States was a 1935 Supreme Court decision that allowed Congress to protect FTC commissioners from being fired without cause. The current court overturned it because the majority concluded that letting Congress limit the president's removal power over agency heads violates the constitutional separation of powers.
What is the unitary executive theory?
It's a constitutional theory, favored by conservative legal scholars since the 1980s, holding that Article II vests all executive power in the president alone. Under this view, Congress cannot create agencies whose leaders are shielded from presidential control, since doing so would effectively divide executive power the Constitution assigns to one person.
Which federal agencies are affected by the Trump v. Slaughter ruling?
Legal analysts point to the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Transportation Safety Board, among other independent commissions structured similarly to the FTC.
What happens next in Lisa Cook's Federal Reserve case?
Cook's case returns to the lower courts, which must now evaluate whether the mortgage fraud allegations against her actually satisfy the legal standard needed to fire a Fed governor "for cause." The underlying question of whether she keeps her seat remains unresolved and could reach the Supreme Court again.
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