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.

The same-day Fed carve-out, and what the ruling has actually produced (added 2026-08-27)

A companion decision bounds this one, and the corpus was missing it. On the same day, the Court decided Trump v. Cook, No. 25A312 (June 29, 2026), 5-4, upholding the Federal Reserve’s for-cause protection as a Fed-specific carve-out. Governor Lisa Cook — whose removal was attempted in August 2025 — remains in office under an active district-court injunction. Canon has the January oral argument (2026-01-21–scotus-hears-trump-v-cook-fed-independence-case) but had no entry for the decision.

So the unitary-executive holding is broad but not total: it reaches roughly two dozen independent agencies and stops at the Fed.

What the ruling has produced in ~60 days, measured (research-independent-agency-removals-post-slaughter-census-2026-08-27): exactly one agency’s leadership has been removed citing it — the Election Assistance Commission, where the White House expressly named Slaughter as the legal basis. Commissioners Hicks and Hovland were fired July 9; Christy McCormick resigned under pressure in the same window. That is a sourced causal link, not an inference from timing.

Everything else commonly attributed to this ruling predates it. The FTC (Slaughter, Bedoya), NLRB (Wilcox), MSPB (Harris), EEOC (Burrows, Samuels), CPSC (Trumka, Hoehn-Saric, Boyle), NRC (Hanson) and FEC (Weintraub) removals all occurred in 2025 — they are the predicate litigation this ruling resolved, not evidence of its effect. Powell was not fired (term expired; Warsh confirmed normally), and FCC’s Anna Gomez is a term-expired holdover, not removed.

The structurally important finding is the mechanism, not the roster. Where agencies have been disabled, it is by quorum loss rather than capture: the EAC now has zero commissioners and cannot certify voting equipment, update the national mail-in registration form, or distribute HAVA grants. The FEC has been below quorum since before the ruling. Agencies that were captured-but-staffed — FTC, CPSC, NRC — keep operating under new direction. A quorum-blocked agency is a quieter outcome than a captured one, and on this evidence the more consequential one.

No lawsuit has been filed over the EAC firings as of 2026-08-27.