HomeCrimeTrump firing of FTC commissioner was 'unlawful': Judge

Trump firing of FTC commissioner was ‘unlawful’: Judge

FDR, Donald Trump

Left: U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt is seen shortly before addressing the public “On the Fall of Rome,” in one of his Fireside Chats from the White House in Washington, June 5, 1944 (AP Photo). Right: President Donald Trump poses for photographers as he arrives for a formal dinner at the Paleis Huis ten Bosch ahead of the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, Tuesday, June 24, 2025 (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., permanently barred President Donald Trump”s subordinates from taking action to prevent “a rightful Commissioner” of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from serving out the rest of her seven-year term.

U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan wrote that the “facts” of the case “almost identically mirror” those in a 90-year-old Supreme Court case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, where an FTC commissioner’s estate sued for backpay and succeeded in arguing that then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not have the power to fire William Humphrey without cause after policy disagreements.

The 1935 unanimous SCOTUS ruling was clear that “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance” were the only causes for firing an FTC commissioner, as Congress expressly intended to insulate the independent fair competition agency from being unfairly subjected to the whims of the executive and, by extension, politicization and dysfunction.

FTC Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya filed suit against Trump, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak, and FTC Executive Director David Robbins in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia back in March.

Slaughter and Bedoya claimed that the president removed them without cause — in direct contravention of the law, which says: “Any Commissioner may be removed by the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

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“In short, it is bedrock, binding precedent that a President cannot remove an FTC Commissioner without cause,” the plaintiffs’ lawsuit said. “And yet that is precisely what has happened here: President Trump has purported to terminate Plaintiffs as FTC Commissioners, not because they were inefficient, neglectful of their duties, or engaged in malfeasance, but simply because their ‘continued service on the FTC is’ supposedly ‘inconsistent with [his] Administration’s priorities.'”

“The President’s action is indefensible under governing law,” they added.

On Thursday, AliKhan agreed, handing Slaughter a permanent injunction blocking her ouster at the summary judgment stage of the litigation, deciding the issue of Slaughter’s reinstatement without need for a trial.

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