The Supreme Court on June 29 upheld the March 2025 firing of a Democratic Federal Trade Commission member by President Donald Trump, a ruling that overturns a 90-year-old precedent and could reshape how more than a dozen agencies operate. The justices said limits Congress placed on a president’s ability to remove members of the Federal Trade Commission encroached on presidential power. Another layer of insulation between ordinary people and raw executive control just got stripped away.
Who Gets Hit First
Consumer advocates said the ruling takes the power to fire leaders of independent agencies away from Congress and gives it to the president. That shift could affect the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, where Trump tried to fire the three Democrats among the five commissioners in May 2025. The people at the bottom of this arrangement are the ones who live with the consequences when watchdogs get gutted and corporate misconduct gets a cleaner path.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of competition and market fairness at the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), said in a statement provided to USA TODAY that the decision risks “turning independent consumer protection agencies into political pawns.” She added, “When the experts charged with policing fraud, protecting competition, and standing up to powerful corporations can be removed at will, consumers lose an important safeguard against abuse.” That’s the whole bargain, laid bare: the powerful get flexibility, and everyone else gets less protection.
What the Court Called Power
Margot Cleveland, of counsel at the right-leaning NCLA, called the ruling “a huge victory for our constitutional republic.” She said the Supreme Court’s decision in Slaughter “ensures that federal agencies remain answerable to the Executive—and in turn the American people who elected the President.” That’s the language of legitimacy, polished up for public consumption. The machinery underneath is simpler: the president gets more direct control over agencies that were supposed to stand a little apart from the political winds.
The FTC enforces a variety of antitrust and consumer protection laws affecting virtually every area of commerce. Trump asked the court to overturn Humphrey's Executor v. United States, a 1935 decision upholding removal restrictions for leaders of multimember administrative agencies. The court has been chipping away at that decision since 2010. Now the old guardrail is gone, and the bosses at the top have one less obstacle between them and the agencies that regulate their world.
Trump said after taking office again in 2025 that all federal agencies were under his control. In March 2025, he fired the two Democratic members of the five-member Federal Trade Commission board, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. Bedoya initially joined Slaughter's legal challenge but eventually withdrew. The firing wasn’t some abstract constitutional theory. It was a direct move against people inside an agency that polices fraud and competition.
What People at the Bottom Said
Bedoya released a statement on June 29 calling the Supreme Court “a billionaire's fan club,” saying it is allowing corporations to hurt people and deny people their day in court. “The only people who will win from this ruling are the President's billionaire golfing buddies. And at the Supreme Court, this is par for the course,” Bedoya said. That’s the bluntest description in the record here, and it comes from someone who got pushed out of the fight.
Courtney Griffin, director of consumer product safety at CFA, said it is CFA's understanding that the CPSC “firings were going to be decided by this case.” “Those firings will stand because this (FTC) firing has stood,” Griffin said. “Today's decision does more than undermine one agency. It completely reshapes our government, and that includes the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the watchdog that guards against dangerous products that injure and kill,” she said. The people who get injured by dangerous products won’t be sitting in the chambers where these decisions get made.
Alexandra Reeve Givens, president and CEO of left-leaning CDT, said Trump's “administration has made no effort to hide its desire to use the levers of government authority to strongarm and intimidate political enemies. The Supreme Court has taken down one of the key barriers stopping them.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had already said on May 9 that Trump could fire any staffers who were part of the executive branch. “He has the right to fire people within the executive branch,” Leavitt said. “It’s a pretty simple answer.” Simple, maybe. For everyone else, it means the state’s grip just got tighter.