The Consumer Federation of America, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and other consumer advocacy and tech groups are speaking up in defense of former FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, who was fired without cause by the Trump administration in March.
A total of 40 groups — which also include Demand Progress Information Center and UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice — filed an amicus brief today in a Supreme Court showdown over whether Trump exceeded his legal authority with Slaughter’s dismissal. The court’s decision could upend a 90-year-old precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor, which bars presidents from firing independent commissioners without cause.
The groups argue that if this happens, independent agencies like the FTC could become politicized and influenced by lobbying, weakening their ability to effectively pass regulations. The brief points to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) as warnings, stating that they “have too often succumbed to industry domination, leading to regulatory failures that cost lives and erode public trust.”
“The historical record is clear and confirms Congress’s deliberate choice: independent agencies outperform their politicized counterparts that are structurally vulnerable to presidential meddling.”
Slaughter and her colleague Alvaro Bedoya were among numerous Democratic federal employees the Trump administration attempted to fire earlier this year, including at the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Labor Relations Board. (After Trump announced the removals, the FTC instructed staff to no longer refer to the agency as “independent.”) Bedoya ultimately had to resign from the FTC in June so he could legally find a new job, but is still asking the court to rule that his firing was illegal. Slaughter has been fighting the move in court for months now, and was briefly reinstated twice, before the Supreme Court blocked a lower court’s order to reinstate her in September.
As this brief points out, this case is less about one person’s job than it is about protecting the overall autonomy of regulators. “The independence of certain agencies like the FTC from presidential control helps promote legitimate policy decisions, protect leadership from presidential or industry pressure, and moderate administrative decisions,” it says. Protections like for-cause removal ensure those decisions are “made by experts, not pure partisans.”
The Supreme Court is scheduled to begin oral arguments for Slaughter’s case on December 8th.
