A federal court in the District of Columbia has recently granted summary judgment to former FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, who is challenging her removal from the FTC by President Trump. Slaughter v. Trump, 2025 WL 1984396 (D.D.C. July 17, 2025).
Slaughter’s lawsuit arises out of the Trump administration’s decision to dismiss both Democratic appointees to the FTC, which was previously addressed by the Franchise Memorandum. Slaughter and her fellow Democratic Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya both sued President Trump and several FTC officials arguing that the Democrats’ removal was unlawful under provisions of the FTC Act and therefore without legal effect. The district court agreed, concluding that the FTC Act only allowed removal of a commissioner “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” none of which the Trump administration claimed was the basis for removal of the two Democratic appointees. Although the order granted Slaughter immediate injunctive relief preventing her removal, the court declined to issue declaratory relief to Bedoya, who had officially announced his resignation from the FTC while the suit was pending and therefore no longer had standing to challenge his removal.
The DOJ, in defending the removal action, noted that similar challenges to the removal of officials from other independent agencies including the National Labor Relations Board were presently before the Supreme Court, and the DOJ argued that the existing stays in those actions suggested that the Trump Administration was likely to prevail on arguments that the executive had the power to remove heads of independent agencies even without cause. While the court acknowledged that the Supreme Court certainly had the prerogative to overrule 90-year-old, unanimous decision in which the Supreme Court upheld the for-cause protections in the FTC Act, a district court was not free to ignore that established binding precedent. The court, also, therefore, denied the government’s request for a stay pending appeal because the DOJ had not established a likelihood of success on the merits or irreparable harm that would come from Slaughter performing her duties as a commissioner while the litigation continued. The D.C. Circuit has, in the meantime, issued an emergency administrative stay of the district court’s decision, but the appellate court has not yet ruled on the merits of a stay.
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