Ex-FTC commissioner calls on Congress to reassert authority after SCOTUS decision

Court Battles Ex-FTC commissioner calls on Congress to reassert authority after SCOTUS decision Comments: by Ryan Mancini - 06/29/26 3:18 PM ET Comments: Link copied by Ryan Mancini - 06/29/26 3:18 PM ET Comments: Link copied

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Former Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter on Monday called on Congress to reassert its authority as a coequal branch of government after the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump had the authority to fire her last year.

The conservative majority ruled 6-3 in favor of the president, expanding presidential power over an independent agency within the executive branch and overturning 91 years of legal precedent.

“Listen, I think what we really need from Congress is for members on both sides of the aisle, Democrat and Republican, to reassert their constitutional responsibility to provide checks on an out of control executive, and they have powers to do so, including the power of the purse and the power of oversight,” Slaughter told reporters during a virtual press conference.

Slaughter added that it was in “everybody’s interest, whomever party you are from, for Congress to use that power, which it really has been neglecting.”

If Congress chooses not to use its authority over Trump, Slaughter said she hopes a future Democratic president will appoint commissioners who will “use the agency’s authority to protect the American people from the cheating and lying by businesses that are taking advantage of them.”

She later said that the ruling does not “end the conversation” about the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) role in protecting consumers while maintaining its political independence.

The ruling overturned the landmark 1935 decision Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which set the standard that Congress can rein in a president from firing the heads of agencies with “quasi-judicial” and “quasi-legislative” functions.

The standard set by the Humphrey’s decision began with the FTC, after then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s firing of FTC Commissioner William Humphrey, an appointee of former President Coolidge, for disagreeing with the president’s New Deal agenda.

Trump praised the court’s Monday decision as a “BIG WIN.”

“It is such an Honor to be the sitting President who won this Historic and Unprecedented Ruling, one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers,” he wrote on Truth Social.

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