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In March, President Trump fired the two Democratic Commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. At the time, both Slaughter and Bedoya said that they planned to challenge the legality of the firings. In a statement, Slaughter said, "The President illegally fired me from my position as a Federal Trade Commissioner, violating the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent."
Slaughter and Bedoya then sued, challenging the legality of the firings. Bedoya ultimately resigned from his position, so that he could take another job.
In July, a federal district court ordered that Slaughter be reinstated, but an emergency stay was granted by the D.C. Circuit pending appeal.
At the beginning of September, the D.C. Circuit dissolved the stay and formally denied the President's motion for a stay pending appeal – thereby reinstating Slaughter to the FTC. The court explained, "The government has no likelihood of success on appeal given controlling and directly on point Supreme Court precedent. Specifically, ninety years ago, a unanimous Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Federal Trade Commission Act's for-cause removal protection for Federal Trade Commissioners."
Shortly after that, in response to an application from the Solicitor General, the Chief Justice issued an order staying her reinstatement pending further order from Roberts or the Supreme Court.
Now, the full Supreme Court has spoken. In a 6-3 decision, the Court stayed the district court's order that required Slaughter to be reinstated to the FTC and granted cert to consider the following two questions: (1) whether the statutory removal protections for members of the FTC violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether the Court should overrule its own precedent on this; and (2) whether a federal court may prevent a person's removal from public office.
In Justice Kagan's dissent (which was joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson), she wrote, "Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars. Still more, it should not be used, as it has also been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation's separation of powers."
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