The end of the deep state is here; Supreme Court seems likely to give Trump more power over agencies President Trump wants the Supreme Court to overturn a 90-year-old precedent limiting his ability to remove leaders of independent agencies. Portrait of Maureen GroppeMaureen Groppe USA TODAY Updated Dec. 8, 2025, 4:56 p.m. ET Deeper Dive BETA Which company sued over Trump's tariffs in a Supreme Court case? When did the Supreme Court hear arguments on Trump's agency firing case? What precedent does Trump seek to overturn regarding agency leadership removal? Which company sued over Trump's tariffs in a Supreme Court case? WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court appears likely to agree with President Donald Trump that he can fire at will the heads of some independent agencies, hearing arguments on Dec. 8 in a case that could redefine how more than a dozen agencies operate and shift power from Congress to the president. The agencies were set up by Congress to be led by politically balanced boards of experts serving staggered, fixed terms. But Trump argues presidential control will make agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Election Commission more accountable to voters who elect presidents. “The real-world consequences here are human beings exercising enormous governmental authority with a great deal of control over individuals and small and large businesses who ultimately do not answer to the president,” Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices during nearly 2 ½ hours of oral arguments. “That’s a power vacuum.” A lawyer for Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a FTC commissioner fired by Trump, countered that independent agencies have been part of the nation's governing structure since 1790. “Any abstract theory that would wipe away so much history and precedent should be a nonstarter,” attorney Amit Agarwal argued. Conservative justices sympathetic to Trump's argument President Donald Trump shakes hands with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 2025. But the court’s conservative supermajority seemed more sympathetic to the Trump administration’s position. Most seemed to agree that the president should be able to remove leaders from at least some agencies and pushed only on how far that could go. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for example, stressed early that he views the Federal Reserve differently. By contrast, the court’s three liberal justices tried to raise the alarm about the potential consequences of letting presidents control agencies that Congress tried to insulate from political interference. “The result of what you want is that the president is going to have massive, unchecked, uncontrolled power,” Justice Elena Kagan said, “not only to do traditional execution, but to make law through legislative and adjudicative frameworks." Get the Susan Page newsletter in your inbox. Get the latest story from Susan Page right in your inbox. Delivery: Varies Your Email In response, Justice Samuel Alito gave Sauer the chance to argue that the results won’t be disastrous. “In fact, our entire government will move towards accountability,” Sauer agreed. But Agarwal said a president could “just on a whim decide tomorrow that everything the agency has been doing is wrong.” Trump wants Supreme Court to overturn a 90-year-old precedent The headquarters of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in Washington, DC, November 18, 2024. Trump wants the court to overturn a 1935 decision limiting a president's ability to remove leaders of multimember administrative agencies, a decision the court has been chipping away at since 2010. Under the “unitary executive theory” that conservatives have advanced for years, the Constitution gives presidents complete control over executive functions, which must include the power to remove commission members. In 1935, however, the Supreme Court said the FTC’s duties were “neither political nor executive, but predominantly quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.” The Department of Justice argues that even if that was a correct interpretation of the FTC in 1935 − which it disputes − it no longer is. Supreme Court could topple yet another campaign finance limit Supreme Court to take on controversial Trump policy on birthright citizenship Supreme Court lets Texas use congressional map favored by Trump Supreme Court not ready to tackle prayers at football games again Supreme Court to review controversial policy at US-Mexico border to limit asylum seekers Trump ratchets up pressure on Supreme Court not to overturn his tariffs Will the Supreme Court treat Trump's tariffs like Biden's policies? Amy Coney Barrett says 'I'm nobody's justice.' That includes Trump. “It was grievously wrong when decided,” Sauer told the justices. He had a receptive audience. Chief Justice John Roberts called that 1935 decision, Humphrey's Executor v. United States, a “dried husk of whatever people used to think it was” because it has “nothing to do with what the FTC looks like today.” But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s most senior liberal justice, asked Sauer if the court has ever overturned such a long-standing precedent with a major impact on how the government operates. “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government and to take away from Congress its ability to protect its idea that a government is better structured with some agencies that are independent,” she said. Expert predicts court will overturn Humprey's Executor Kevin King, a partner at Covington & Burling law firm who focuses on appellate and administrative and constitutional law matters, expects the court to overrule − not just further curtail − Humphrey’s Executor. That would mean Trump could remove heads of the FTC and of similar agencies. But King said Kagan’s probing about the potentially far-reaching consequences on other agencies could make a difference when the justices meet privately to discuss the case. “Even if Justice Kagan is not on the winning side of the vote here,” he said, “she nevertheless is influencing the court’s reasoning, and her questions may lead some of her colleagues to take a more cautious and narrow approach here.” Trump declared all federal agencies are under his control The Supreme Court from left, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan. After taking office, Trump declared that all federal agencies are under his control. “The days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over,” the president said in a March address to Congress. That same month, Trump fired the two Democratic members of the five-member Federal Trade Commission board, Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. The FTC enforces a variety of antitrust and consumer protection laws affecting virtually every area of commerce. He’d already removed Democratic members of two federal labor boards and would later fire the three Democrats on the CPSC. The Supreme Court allowed the firings to proceed while it decides whether Congress had the ability to limit the reasons regulators could be removed to “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Supreme Court will later consider Federal Reserve case Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook attends the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's 2025 Jackson Hole economic symposium, "Labor Markets in Transition: Demographics, Productivity, and Macroeconomic Policy" in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Aug. 23, 2025. One question hanging over the case is whether the court will treat the Federal Reserve Board of Governors differently, as the justices suggested they might earlier this year when issuing a temporary ruling about firing labor commission members without cause. And the court did not allow Trump to immediately fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, deciding instead to hear arguments in January on his claim that he has just cause to remove her. Slaughter’s and Cook’s cases are among at least four the justices are deciding in the coming months that test Trump’s expansive view of presidential authority. The court is also weighing whether Trump can impose sweeping tariffs on imports even though the Constitution gives Congress the power to raise revenue. And the court will decide if Trump's interpretation of the Constitution means he can deny citizenship to some babies born in the United States. A decision in Trump v. Slaughter is expected by the end of June.