Two former commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission are going head-to-head with Donald Trump in court, accusing him of unlawfully kicking them out of their posts. The duo—Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter—say they weren’t just fired, they were illegally fired, and they’re not walking away quietly.
Filed in Washington, the lawsuit claims Trump’s March 18 dismissal of the two Democrats trampled on long-established federal law and ignored a landmark 1935 Supreme Court ruling that protects the FTC’s independence from presidential overreach. That decision—Humphrey’s Executor v. United States—has stood for nearly a century as a bulwark against presidents trying to turn independent agencies into personal fiefdoms.
“It is bedrock, binding precedent that a President cannot remove an FTC Commissioner without cause,” the pair declared in the suit. “And yet that is precisely what has happened here.”
At the heart of the legal clash is the idea that FTC commissioners can only be fired for actual misconduct or dereliction of duty—not just political convenience. Trump’s camp, however, is brushing off the complaint as noise.
Andrew Ferguson, the current FTC chairman, defended Trump’s actions, saying the president holds constitutional authority over agencies that exercise executive power. “My Democrat former colleagues are entitled to their day in court,” he said, “but I have no doubt that President Trump’s lawful powers will ultimately be confirmed.”
This lawsuit isn’t a one-off. Trump is already facing legal challenges over other terminations, including his removals of officials from the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board. In both of those cases, federal judges have signaled that Trump may have stepped outside the legal lines.
Now, Bedoya and Slaughter are asking the court to nullify their dismissals and send them back to their FTC desks. But the implications reach far beyond just two jobs—depending on how the case plays out, it could redraw the balance between the White House and the dozens of federal agencies meant to operate at arm’s length from presidential politics.
