US: Supreme Court poised to back Trump over FTC case

Conservative justices hinted that a legal precedent protecting agency tenure lengths and restricting presidential authority is out of date, but Liberals have warned of a significant boost to President Trump’s power.
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US: Supreme Court poised to back Trump over FTC case

Conservative justices hinted that a legal precedent protecting agency tenure lengths and restricting presidential authority is out of date, but Liberals have warned of a significant boost to President Trump’s power.

The Supreme Court building in Washington, DC.
It is the latest Supreme Court case where Trump has been accused of exceeding his presidential authority

The United States Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to hand President Donald Trump a significant boost in executive power after conservative justices signaled that they would uphold the dismissal of a member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

President Trump fired Democratic FTC member Rebecca Slaughter in March, four years before the end of her term and in contradiction of a 90-year-old legal precedent which affords tenure protection to the heads of independent agencies.

A lower court had initially ruled that Trump had exceeded his presidential authority by dismissing Slaughter but, during a two-hour appeal hearing, the Justice Department argued that tenure protections unlawfully encroached on presidential power.

And the argument appeared on Monday to have earned sympathy from conservative justices, who have a 6-3 Supreme Court majority and who have called for the precedent in question – known as “Humphrey’s Executor v. United States” – to be overturned.