What Happened
On June 29, the Supreme Court issued two rulings on the same day, both written by Chief Justice Roberts, addressing whether Trump can fire members of independent federal agencies. In Trump v. Slaughter, the Court ruled 6-3 that Trump could fire FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, overturning the 1935 precedent Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that had protected members of multi-member independent agencies from removal without cause. In Trump v. Cook, decided the same day, the Court ruled 5-4 the opposite way, that Trump could not fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook while her legal challenge proceeds. Only Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh were in the majority in both cases.
Background
Slaughter. The FTC was created in 1914. Congress specified commissioners could only be removed for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Trump fired Slaughter in March 2025 without citing any of those grounds, telling her that keeping her on would be “inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities.” Lower courts sided with Slaughter, but the Supreme Court allowed her firing to take effect last September while it considered the underlying legal question, which it has now resolved against her.
Cook. The Federal Reserve’s seven-member Board of Governors serves staggered 14-year terms, removable only “for cause.” Trump attempted to fire Cook in August, alleging mortgage fraud from 2021, before she joined the Fed. Cook denies the allegation, calling it “flimsy” and “conveniently timed” after Trump criticized the Fed’s policy decisions. A district court ordered Cook reinstated pending litigation, and the Supreme Court’s ruling keeps her in that position for now.
The Vote Breakdown
Slaughter (6-3): Roberts wrote the majority, joined by the Court’s other conservative justices. Sotomayor dissented, joined by Kagan and Jackson, and read a summary of her dissent from the bench, a step reserved for cases where a justice wants to signal strong disagreement. Gorsuch wrote a separate concurrence arguing the Court should go further and strip agencies of their broader legislative and judicial-style powers, not just insulate them from removal.
Cook (5-4): Roberts again wrote the majority, this time joined by Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson, and no other conservative justice besides himself. Thomas dissented, calling the ruling inconsistent: the Court expressed concern about a Fed governor being removed for the first time in the Fed’s 111-year history, but not about the Court itself, for the first time in the Constitution’s 237-year history, blocking a president from removing an executive officer.
The core distinction the majority draws: the Fed’s structure and its 92-year tradition of insulation from politics are different in kind from the FTC’s, so Cook stays while the underlying legal dispute over her firing continues, while Slaughter’s removal is final. Several dissenting and outside commentators, cited below, argue this distinction is not well justified by the reasoning in either opinion.
What Different Sides Are Saying
President Trump. He called the Slaughter ruling the “Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years.” This is his characterization of the ruling’s significance, not a factual claim to check, though the ruling’s broad effect on roughly two dozen independent agencies (described in Sotomayor’s dissent, which named the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Merit Systems Protection Board as examples) supports that it is, at minimum, a major structural shift.
Rebecca Slaughter. At a news conference, she said, “Somehow Wall Street is special and gets special treatment, but other than that, the agencies that look out for everyday Americans do not.” This is an accurate description of the practical outcome: the Fed retains its removal protections while the FTC and similar agencies do not, based on the Court’s own reasoning that the Fed is uniquely tied to central banking history.
Justice Sotomayor (dissenting in Slaughter). She wrote that the ruling “reshapes our Government” and gives the president “a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted.” This is legal argument and rhetorical framing within a dissenting opinion, not an empirical claim, though her list of affected agencies is factually accurate per the ruling’s own scope.
Justice Thomas (dissenting in Cook). His point about consistency, that the majority worried about an unprecedented firing at the Fed but not about an unprecedented judicial block on presidential removal power, is a legal argument about the two rulings’ internal coherence rather than a factual claim.
Commentary from the right (City Journal, among others) frames the rulings as a correction restoring constitutional structure, arguing that voters can now hold the president directly accountable for agency actions rather than “insulated mandarins.” This is an opinion position, one side of a genuine and long-running debate in administrative law about whether independent agencies should exist at all.
Commentary from the left (The Nation, Balls and Strikes, among others) argues the two rulings are contradictory, applying accountability logic to justify Slaughter’s firing while applying independence logic to block Cook’s, and suggests the real distinguishing factor is that a Fed shakeup risked broader economic disruption. This is also opinion and interpretation, though it accurately identifies that the Court’s own opinions do not cross-reference or reconcile each other’s reasoning, a point also raised by Justice Barrett’s separate dissent in Cook, which is described as calling the two outcomes in “serious tension.”
Note on Scope
I could not independently verify whether Congress has any pending legislative response to either ruling, since none of the sources reviewed here addressed one directly. That would need separate confirmation before reporting on it.
Related Links
- SCOTUSblog: Court allows Trump to fire FTC commissioner and overturns major restraint on presidential power
- SCOTUSblog: Court prevents Trump from firing Fed governor
- SCOTUSblog: After Slaughter and Cook, future Fed fights, and maybe some midnight firings
- CBS News: Supreme Court expands presidential firing power, overturning 90-year-old ruling
- NBC News: Supreme Court rules Trump can’t fire Fed member Lisa Cook, grants him more power over other independent agencies
- CNN: Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s decisions expanding Trump’s firing power but preserving Fed for now
- Wikipedia: Trump v. Slaughter
