Along with two chyron-ready Supreme Court decisions allowing some mail-in ballots to be received after election day and staying (at least temporarily) Donald Trump’s attempt to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, Chief Justice John Roberts penned a third ruling of historic proportions, one that was decades in the making.
The majorities in the first two cases cut across party lines. The third one did not. Writing for the Republican-appointed supermajority, Roberts moved the nation closer to a so-called unitary executive theory of power. It’s a previously fringe idea, one thrust into the spotlight by the second Trump administration, which seeks to centralize power in the presidency at the expense of the legislative branch.
Today’s ruling overturns a landmark 1935 case that laid the legal groundwork for the modern administrative state. It specifically empowers Trump to dismiss Democratic Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Kelly Slaughter despite an act of Congress that says commissioners can be removed only for specified reasons.
More broadly, Trump is now free to fire any of the heads or members of what were once considered independent agencies and regulators, as he has repeatedly sought to do. (The court did say it was carving out an exception for the Federal Reserve.)
The ruling extends a long line of major decisions by the Roberts court that have whittled away the power of regulators and the independence of agencies. But in finally rejecting the century-old precedent, the court fulfilled something Roberts suggested 43 years ago as a member of Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department, when he felt “the time is ripe” to reconsider what he deemed “the constitutional anomaly of independent agencies.” It also achieves one of the main pillars of the far-right Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a playbook that has largely been adopted by the administration. —David E. Rovella
