Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay Monday that has effectively put a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent on the brink of being overturned. The ruling, made without explanation on the court’s emergency docket, allows President Donald Trump to proceed with his firing of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, despite a lower court and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals having blocked the action just last week.
The decision has significant ramifications for the independence of federal agencies and could pave the way for President Trump to fire Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook.
A Battle Over Executive Power
The legal battle centers on the 1935 Supreme Court case, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which held that a president can’t fire officials at independent agencies for mere policy disagreements. The precedent established that “cause” for removal must be based on “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
Last week, both U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan and a majority of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had sided with Slaughter, finding that the circumstances of her firing by the Trump administration “almost identically mirror” the facts of the Humphrey’s Executor case. The D.C. Circuit majority, comprised of Judges Patricia Millett and Cornelia Pillard, stated that doing anything but reinstating Slaughter “would be to defy the Supreme Court’s decisions that bind our judgments.”
Hellbound and Down 