Judges appear poised to give Trump more authority to fire independent government officials

The Supreme Court appeared poised Monday to make it easier for President Trump to fire independent government officials, despite laws intended to protect them from political pressure, which would represent a significant expansion of the president’s power.

As they heard a case involving Trump’s attempt to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission, members of the court’s conservative majority appeared poised to overturn or severely limit a landmark 1935 decision.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is almost always in the majority in major cases, told the FTC that the speech protected 90 years ago had nothing to do with the modern commission, which he said wields enormous executive power, an authority that the Constitution reserves to the president. He called the 1935 precedent a “dry husk.”

Although they appeared receptive to the Trump administration’s maximalist position, several key justices appeared intent on ensuring that the court’s ultimate decision in the case did not threaten the Federal Reserve’s independence. The judges will hear a separate case Dealing with Mr. Trump’s attempt to fire a Fed governor in January.

The court’s three liberal justices warned of the far-reaching consequences for the structure of modern government if the majority sided with the Trump administration on the Federal Trade Commission issue.

A ruling in the president’s favor, they said, would call into question the constitutionality of job protections extended to heads of more than two dozen other agencies charged by Congress with protecting consumers, workers and the environment.

Justice Elena Kagan said such a ruling would “place massive, unchecked and unchecked power in the hands of the president.”

Judge Sonia Sotomayor told the government’s lawyer that “you are asking us to destroy the structure of government” and deprive Congress of the ability to protect independent agencies from political pressure.

In response, D. John Sauer, the attorney general, said that “the sky will not fall” if the justices give the president this new power. “In fact, our entire government will move toward accountability to the people,” he said.

Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has fired government watchdogs, heads of independent agencies and rank-and-file federal employees, prompting numerous legal challenges.

The Supreme Court has generally given effect to dismissals through emergency interim orders. Monday’s case presents the court’s first opportunity to make a final decision on the underlying legal issues surrounding Mr. Trump’s firings.

Next month, the justices will separately consider whether the president has the authority to fire Lisa Cook, a governor of the Federal Reserve Board. The justices left Ms. Cook in place for now, suggesting that the central bank’s history may make it uniquely immune from presidential interference.

Monday’s discussion was about Trump’s firing of Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the FTC, in March. Mr. Trump said he would fire her because she did not fit his agenda, even though a law says the president can only fire commissioners for “inefficiency, dereliction of duty or misconduct in office.” Ms. Slaughter immediately filed suit.

Their lawyer, Amit Agarwal of Protect Democracy, told the justices on Monday that presidents of both parties have long accepted that FTC commissioners cannot be removed without good cause, including to ensure regulatory stability.

“Dozens of institutions that have been around for a long time, that have withstood the test of time, that embody a distillation of human wisdom and experience, would all fail” if the court were to abandon previous precedents, Mr. Agarwal said.

Congress intentionally created such bipartisan commissions — made up of experts who could not be fired by the president without cause — to ensure that policy decisions were made independently of politics.

Founded in 1914, the FTC protects consumers from deceptive practices and monopoly power. It is led by five commissioners who serve staggered seven-year terms. no more than three can be members of the same party.

The FTC has been run only by Republicans since March, after Mr. Trump fired a second Democrat, Alvaro Bedoya. After initially challenging his dismissal, Mr. Bedoya resigned, citing financial pressure.

A district judge ruled in July that Ms. Slaughter’s firing was unlawful, and in early September she was reinstated by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

This court declared that a commissioner could not be dismissed without the necessary reasons of “inefficiency, dereliction of duty or misconduct in office.” The panel noted the job protections maintained by the 1935 decision, which also affected a fired FTC commissioner.

In that decision, Humphrey’s Executor v. US, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld removal restrictions for government officials on multi-member boards. The justices in the case said President Franklin D. Roosevelt could not remove a member of the FTC based solely on political differences.

But over the past 15 years, the court has repeatedly limited that decision to give the president more control over executive officials.

“Since 1789, the Constitution has been understood to authorize the president to hold these officials accountable—if necessary, by removing them from office,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in 2010.

Recently, the court found that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional because it did not allow the president to fire its sole director without cause. The court allowed workplace protections to remain in place for multi-member organizations like the FTC

But in emergency orders issued this year, the conservative majority allowed the president to temporarily fire heads of agencies governed by such multi-member boards, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

As a result, Mr. Sauer suggested in court filings that the precedent in question was already a “dead letter” that should be overruled. Such term protections, he told the court in filings, unconstitutionally violate the president’s authority to direct the executive branch.

In response, Ms. Slaughter’s lawyers told the court that overturning the precedent decades later would “deeply destabilize institutions that are now inextricably intertwined with the fabric of American governance.”