President Donald Trump secured one of the biggest constitutional victories of his presidency after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 91 year old precedent that had limited a president’s authority to remove officials from so called “independent” federal agencies.
In a 6 to 3 ruling, the Court held that presidents have the constitutional authority to remove officials serving in executive branch agencies, striking down key parts of the Court’s 1935 decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. The ruling immediately gives Trump the authority to remove Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat whose case became the central test of the administration’s push to restore executive power.
The decision is expected to reshape the federal government by strengthening presidential control over agencies responsible for labor policy, consumer protection, workplace discrimination, aviation safety, financial regulation, and other executive functions.
Chief Justice John Roberts made the Court’s position unmistakable.
“If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it.”
The ruling effectively ends nearly a century of legal precedent that allowed Congress to shield certain executive branch officials from being fired by the president.
Conservative legal analyst Ben Dyke called the decision a “bombshell,” adding, “This is historic.”
Dyke argued the Constitution has always vested executive authority in the president alone, pointing to the opening sentence of Article II:
“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
Supporters of the ruling say the Constitution never envisioned unelected bureaucrats operating independently of the elected chief executive. Instead, they argue, executive branch officials are accountable to the president, who is ultimately accountable to the American people.
https://bigleaguepolitics.substack.com/p/supreme-court-hands-trump-landmark