In a major expansion of presidential authority, the Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for President Trump to fire independent government regulators despite federal laws meant to protect their jobs. But the justices carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve, preventing the president from immediately removing Lisa D. Cook from the powerful central bank.
The court’s 6-to-3 ruling to broadly allow the firings, with the three liberal justices dissenting, represented a significant shift in power from Congress to the president, and could drastically change the federal government’s structure by giving the president more control over independent agencies.
The case tested whether Mr. Trump could oust Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, simply because she did not align with his agenda, despite a law that says the president can remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
But the decision has implications for more than two dozen agencies — including those charged with protecting consumers, workers, the environment and nuclear safety — that have traditionally been insulated from presidential control.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump celebrated what he called a “BIG WIN,” adding that it was a “Historic and Unprecedented Ruling, one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers.”
In a separate decision, however, the court voted 5 to 4 to block the president from ousting Ms. Cook, a Fed governor, saying the nation’s central bank was uniquely independent and should not be subject to political interference.
The justices found that Ms. Cook had not been given an opportunity to refute the administration’s unproven allegations of mortgage fraud, the rationale Mr. Trump had offered in attempting to fire her.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. rejected what he described as the administration’s “halfhearted” contention that Ms. Cook had received a fair or due process when the president posted about her removal on social media.
“That will not do,” wrote the chief justice, who was joined by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and the three liberal justices. “At minimum, Cook was entitled to some explanation of the evidence at issue, some avenue for a response.”
Former top Fed and Treasury officials and Ms. Cook’s legal team had warned the Supreme Court that allowing Mr. Trump to remove her while litigation was underway would spur economic turmoil and undermine the longstanding independence of the central bank.
Ms. Cook said in a statement Monday that the president’s move to fire her was “an attempt to remove me on a manufactured pretext because I refused to bow to political pressure and continued to set interest rates based only on what would best serve the American people.”
But the court’s ruling in her favor was limited. The justices allowed her to remain on the job while litigation continues in the lower courts. Mr. Trump can continue to seek her removal as long as courts “assess the validity and sufficiency of such charges,” the chief justice wrote.
In the F.T.C. case, the justices cast aside a 90-year precedent that had prevented presidents from removing independent regulators without cause and solely over policy disagreements.
A majority of the justices have long been sympathetic to the argument the Trump administration was making that the Constitution vests all executive power in the president, and that he or she must be able to control everything the executive branch does.
Even before Mr. Trump returned to the White House, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority had chipped away at Congress’s power to constrain a president’s authority to remove some independent regulators, finding that some laws restricting the president from ousting independent officials without cause were unconstitutional.
Several justices had for years said that they were eager to overturn the 1935 precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, that has protected independent agencies. That case also involved the F.T.C.
In the court’s decision on Monday, the chief justice said that “neither Congress nor the courts may saddle” the president with executive branch officials “with whom he cannot work.”
Those who “exercise the president’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the president, and the president to the people,” he wrote, joined by the five other justices nominated by Republican presidents.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor read a lengthy summary of her dissent from the bench, warning that the court’s decision would unleash chaos.
Independent agencies will be “transformed in ways that those who created them never could have expected and actively sought to avoid, fundamentally recalibrating the balance of power in this country in the process,” she wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
As a result of the court’s decision, she added, the president would have far greater power to shape independent agencies.
“It is a power, however, that neither the people, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “In granting the president this unbridled authority, the court upends its precedent, misconstrues our history and sheds any pretense of judicial modesty.”
The decision in Ms. Slaughter’s case was also forecast in a series of temporary emergency orders the court issued last year. In the orders, the conservative majority signaled a willingness to overrule the precedent and declare that laws shielding agency heads from presidential ouster were unconstitutional.
In addition to the F.T.C., the court permitted the president to oust, for the time being, the Democratic leaders of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to make way for replacements who share his policy priorities.
In Ms. Slaughter’s case at the F.T.C., the longstanding project of the conservative legal movement to overturn the precedent merged with Mr. Trump’s desire to oust officials from across the government.
The F.T.C., which was created in 1914, protects consumers from deceptive practices and abuse by monopolies, regulating matters ranging from credit cards to horseracing. Like other independent agencies, it was designed by Congress to be shielded from politics. It is led by five commissioners who serve staggered seven-year terms. No more than three of them can be members of the same party.
Ms. Slaughter, first nominated by Mr. Trump in 2018, was renominated by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2023, and unanimously confirmed by the Senate to a term that expires in 2029. Mr. Trump dismissed her in March 2025 in an email that said her service was “inconsistent with my administration’s priorities.” She then sued.
