Trump v. Slaughter

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1 Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025)
K
AGAN, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 25A264 (25-332)
DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES,
ET AL. v. REBECCA KELLY SLAUGHTER,
ET AL.
ON APPLICATION FOR STAY
[September 22, 2025]
The application for stay presented to THE CHIEF JUSTICE
and by him referred to the Court is granted. The July 17,
2025 order of the United States District Court for the Dis-
trict of Columbia, No. 25–cv–909, ECF Doc. 52, is stayed.
The application is also treated as a petition for a writ of cer-
tiorari before judgment, and the petition is granted. The
parties are directed to brief and argue the following ques-
tions: (1) Whether the statutory removal protections for
members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the sep-
aration of powers and, if so, whether Humphrey’s Executor
v. United States, 295 U. S. 602 (1935), should be overruled.
(2) Whether a federal court may prevent a person’s removal
from public office, either through relief at equity or at law.
The Clerk is directed to establish a briefing schedule that
will allow the case to be argued in the December 2025 ar-
gument session. The stay shall terminate upon the sending
down of the judgment of this Court.
J
USTICE KAGAN, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and
J
USTICE JACKSON join, dissenting from the grant of the ap-
plication for stay.
On top of granting certiorari before judgment in this case,
the Court today issues a stay enabling the President to im-
mediately discharge, without any cause, a member of the
Federal Trade Commission (FTC). That stay, granted on

2 TRUMP v. SLAUGHTER
K
AGAN, J., dissenting
our emergency docket, is just the latest in a series. Earlier
this year, the same majority, by the same mechanism, per-
mitted the President to fire without cause members of the
National Labor Relations Board, the Merits Systems Pro-
tection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commis-
sion. See Trump v. Wilcox, 605 U. S. ___ (2025); Trump v.
Boyle, 606 U. S. ___ (2025). Congress, as everyone agrees,
prohibited each of those presidential removals. See, e.g., 15
U. S. C. § 41 (barring the President from discharging FTC
Commissioners except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or
malfeasance in office”). Under the relevant statutes, the
entities just listed are “classic independent agenc[ies]”—
“ ‘multi-member, bipartisan commission[s]’ whose members
serve staggered terms and cannot be removed except for
good reason.” Boyle, 606 U. S., at ___ (K
AGAN, J., dissenting
from grant of application for stay) (slip op., at 1). Yet the
majority, stay order by stay order, has handed full control
of all those agencies to the President. He may now re-
move—so says the majority, though Congress said differ-
ently—any member he wishes, for any reason or no reason
at all. And he may thereby extinguish the agencies’ bipar-
tisanship and independence.
I dissented from the majority’s prior stay orders, and to-
day do so again. Under existing law, what Congress said
goes—as this Court unanimously decided nearly a century
ago. In Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U. S.
602 (1935), we rejected a claim of presidential prerogative
identical to the one made in this case. (Indeed, the suit
emerged from a discharge at the very same agency.) Con-
gress, we held, may restrict the President’s power to remove
members of the FTC, as well as other agencies performing
“quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial” functions, without vio-
lating the Constitution. Id., at 629. So the President can-
not, as he concededly did here, fire an FTC Commissioner
without any reason. To reach a different result requires re-
versing the rule stated in Humphrey’s: It entails overriding

3 Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025)
K
AGAN, J., dissenting
rather than accepting Congress’s judgment about agency
design. The majority may be raring to take that action, as
its grant of certiorari before judgment suggests. But until
the deed is done, Humphrey’s controls, and prevents the
majority from giving the President the unlimited removal
power Congress denied him. Because the majority’s stay
does just that, I respectfully dissent. Our emergency docket
should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit
what our own precedent bars. Still more, it should not be
used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority
from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the
Nation’s separation of powers.