In a dramatic legal confrontation that could reshape the boundaries of presidential authority, two ousted Democratic commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission are heading to court to argue that Donald Trump had no right to fire them.
Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, both removed from their posts in March, are asking a federal judge in Washington to declare their terminations unlawful and to reinstate them. They claim the firings violated a law that has protected the independence of the FTC for nearly a century.
At the heart of the case is a 1935 Supreme Court decision—Humphrey’s Executor v. United States—which said presidents can’t remove FTC commissioners without good cause. Trump’s move, they argue, flew in the face of that ruling, which drew a clear line: agencies tasked with enforcing the law independently can’t be controlled by the White House.
But the Trump administration is pushing a different narrative. It contends that the FTC of today—with expanded powers to block mergers and impose fines—is no longer the same agency the Court protected in 1935. Under this view, the modern FTC operates squarely within the executive branch and should be subject to the president’s authority.
That argument, however, has already been shot down by multiple courts. Slaughter and Bedoya say the legal precedent is settled—and that their removal amounts to an unconstitutional power play.
The fight is far from isolated. It comes as other Trump-era terminations—at the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board—also face scrutiny in the courts. And the U.S. Supreme Court may soon weigh in, potentially redrawing the lines that separate the presidency from the country’s independent watchdogs.
For now, the FTC remains under Republican leadership, with a structure that bars more than three of its five commissioners from belonging to the same political party. But the outcome of this case could upend that balance—and redefine how far a president can reach into institutions designed to operate above partisan politics.
