{"id":665172,"date":"2026-06-30T00:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T00:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/665172\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T00:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T00:06:14","slug":"outcry-over-supreme-court-decision-to-grant-trump-power-to-fire-agency-chiefs-us-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/665172\/","title":{"rendered":"Outcry over supreme court decision to grant Trump power to fire agency chiefs | US supreme court"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a reality TV show host, Donald Trump<\/a> rose to fame with the catchphrase: \u201cYou\u2019re fired!\u201d. On Monday, the US supreme court handed him<\/a> \u2013 and all future presidents \u2013 the power to fire leaders of independent agencies or commissions, overturning 90 years of court precedent curbing executive power.<\/p>\n

While Trump celebrated the decision on Truth Social<\/a> as a \u201cbig win\u201d, labor advocates, unions, and consumer advocacy groups criticized the supreme court decision on the case, Trump v Slaughter, and warned of the long-term impacts for democracy in the US. Slaughter said she was \u201cprofoundly disappointed<\/a> about today\u2019s decision\u201d during a press call.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no sugar-coating Slaughter. It\u2019s an enormously important ruling (far more important than the other three decisions handed down today). It\u2019s a huge win for Trump\/the executive. And it\u2019s going to have massive ramifications for the functioning of the government long after Trump is gone,\u201d wrote<\/a> Stephen Vladeck, a Georgetown Law professor.<\/p>\n

Trump has already fired several leaders of independent agencies during his second presidential term. He fired<\/a> National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve on the agency\u2019s board; Susan Tsui Grundmann,<\/a> one of three board members at the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA); Erika McEntarfer<\/a>, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics; and Deirdre Hamilton<\/a>, a member of the National Mediation Board.<\/p>\n

But it was his firing<\/a> of a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter, in March of last year, that led to the supreme court ruling. Slaughter said in a statement that she was fired \u201cbecause I have a voice. And he [Trump] is afraid of what I\u2019ll tell the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump also fired another Democratic commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, Alvaro Bedoya.<\/p>\n

No cause was given for justifying the firings, other than noting<\/a> their \u201ccontinued service on the FTC is inconsistent with [the Trump] administration\u2019s priorities\u201d.<\/p>\n

The ruling overturns Humphrey\u2019s Executor, a 1935 ruling<\/a> that the US constitution did not grant \u201cillimitable power of removal\u201d to the president and protected independent agency staff from potential political attacks from the president. That case was triggered by Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s attempt to fire William Humphrey, a Republican commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Justice Sotomayor recognized in dissent, today\u2019s decision abandons nearly a century of settled constitutional understanding and replaces it with a loyalty test,\u201d said Gary DiBianco, co-founder of the pro bono litigation corps Lawyers for Good Government<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The decision will leave Trump and any future president in far greater control of independent agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn short, our authoritarian president was just handed the keys to be even more authoritarian, and the long-term consequences will no doubt be disastrous,\u201d said Rachel Rossi, the president of Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group, in a statement on the ruling.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder this ruling, the guardrails against corruption and unfair interference by President Trump are further eroded, putting millions of Americans at risk,\u201d said Michael Sozan, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. \u201cThis ruling, which overturns nearly a century of well-settled law, allows the president to exert undue political pressure over government agencies that Congress designed to be insulated from such coercion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision effectively prioritizes the political preferences of the president over ensuring that independent agencies can carry out their enforcement and regulatory functions consistent with the law and operate with integrity,\u201d said Jocelyn Frye of the National Partnership for Women & Families.<\/p>\n

In a separate ruling, the supreme court ruled against<\/a> Trump\u2019s firing of Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, which Trump attempted<\/a> in August last year. But the supreme court has made clear that the Fed will be treated differently from other government agencies.<\/p>\n

Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the Slaughter decision \u201cegregiously wrong\u201d<\/a>, arguing that the majority had upended settled constitutional law in a ruling that, she wrote, \u201cpromises to unleash only chaos\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, the court discards that democratic regime in favor of one that distorts the structure of government to fit the majority\u2019s theory of unitary, total executive control. The result is a president who emerges with far greater power than ever before,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Read more supreme court coverage:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a reality TV show host, Donald Trump rose to fame with the catchphrase: \u201cYou\u2019re fired!\u201d. On Monday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-665172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}