Supreme Court Overturns Humphrey's Executor, Grants President At-Will Firing Power Over Independent Agencies

In a 6-3 ruling on June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court overturned Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), holding that President Trump’s firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter without cause was lawful. The decision grants the president sweeping at-will removal authority over roughly two dozen independent agencies Congress designed to insulate from direct presidential control — the FTC, CFPB, NLRB, and others — vindicating the unitary-executive theory and removing a structural check that stood for 91 years. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority; Justice Sotomayor dissented that the ruling converts the duty to faithfully execute the laws into a license to defy them.

This is the merits ruling that the timeline anticipated through the cert grant (2025-12-08–supreme-court-independent-agency-firing-humphreys-executor) and the shadow-docket stay in 2025-05-22–scotus-stays-trump-v-wilcox-nlrb-mspb-removal. It completes a doctrinal arc running from 1926-10-25–myers-v-united-states-taft-presidential-removal-power through Scalia’s Morrison v. Olson dissent (1988-06-29–morrison-v-olson-independent-counsel-scalia-dissent). Decided the same week as the nationwide-injunctions ruling, it forms a structural pair: independent agencies can now be captured by removal, and courts lose the broad tool to halt the resulting cascade — the Court-rigging and accountability-elimination categories operating in tandem.