The Supreme Court cast its long-telegraphed death blow to independent agencies Monday,...
The Supreme Court cast its long-telegraphed death blow to independent agencies Monday, confirming that the president can fire at-will civil servants that were meant to be insulated from political backlash. In a second opinion, though, the Court gave the Federal Reserve a special carveout from this new reality.
The odd baby-splitting in the combination of Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook — both authored by Chief Justice John Roberts — reveals the right-wing Court’s priorities: It may be sanguine about the demolition of agencies mostly used to regulate big business and protect worker rights, but is far less willing to let President Trump take over the Fed and unleash global economic chaos.
In all, the decisions represent a major triumph for the unitary executive theory pushed by the legal right for decades, as the president will now have nearly the entire executive branch under his command. The Court had been steadily marching in this direction for years, hacking away at independent agency protections in different forms. Now a major 1935 precedent protecting agency leaders, Humphrey’s Executor, has fallen.
“Today, the Court discards that democratic regime in favor of one that distorts the structure of Government to fit the majority’s theory of unitary, total executive control,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her Slaughter dissent. “The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before. It is a power, however, that neither the People, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him.”
In Slaughter, the case that overturned Humphrey’s Executor and cleared the way for the president to fire members of non-Fed independent agencies, Roberts is joined in the majority by Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, with Justice Clarence Thomas joining all but one section. Gorsuch also wrote a concurring opinion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In Cook, the case where the Court found the government unlikely to succeed in its attempt to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook on trumped-up mortgage fraud charges, Roberts is joined by Justices Kavanaugh, Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson. Kavanaugh and Jackson also wrote concurring opinions. Justices Thomas, Barrett and Alito all wrote separate dissents, with Justice Gorsuch joining in the last.
