Supreme Court temporarily greenlights firing of Biden-appointed FTC commissioner

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a brief order that Biden-appointed FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter should remain fired from her job, at least for the next week, while the Supreme Court continues to consider her case.

The high court's order responding to an emergency petition from the Trump administration comes as Slaughter has faced whiplash in the courts while challenging Trump's decision to fire her at will.

In a statement provided to Fox News Digital, Slaughter said she respected the Supreme Court's short-term decision and vowed to continue fighting her removal.

"I intend to see this case through to the end," Slaughter said. "In the week I was back at the FTC it became even more clear to me that we desperately need the transparency and accountability Congress intended to have at bipartisan independent agencies."

Trump's decision to fire Slaughter and the other Democrat-appointed commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, stood in tension with the FTC Act, which says commissioners should only be fired from their seven-year tenures for cause, such as malfeasance.

Their firings are at odds with a 90-year-old Supreme Court ruling in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, which found that President Franklin D. Roosevelt's firing of an FTC commissioner was illegal.

Solicitor General John Sauer argued to the high court that the FTC wielded significant executive power and that its authority had expanded since the 1930s, when Humphrey's Executor first established that an at-will FTC firing was illegal. The FTC now enforces dozens of statutes, including the Sherman Act, and has power to bring lawsuits seeking injunctions and penalties, Sauer noted.

"Contrary to the lower courts' suggestion, Humphrey's Executor does not mean that Article II permits tenure protections for any agency named the 'Federal Trade Commission,' no matter how much more executive power the FTC accumulates," Sauer said.