White House Counsel Calls Supreme Court Firing-Power Ruling a 'Generational Win'

White House counsel Will Scharf used the Federalist Society's annual National Lawyers Convention in Washington on Thursday, Nov. 12, to celebrate a Supreme Court ruling from June. He called it a "generational win."

The case is Trump v. Slaughter. The Court ruled 6-3 that President Trump could fire Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic appointee who was named to the commission under President Joe Biden.

The decision goes well beyond one commissioner. It holds that presidents have authority to fire the heads of most independent federal agencies at will.

What the Court overturned

The ruling upended Humphrey's Executor v. United States, a precedent more than 90 years old. That case blocked President Franklin D. Roosevelt from firing a member of the FTC and became the foundation for insulating independent commissions from presidential control.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. He said the old precedent had not withstood the test of time.

Roberts leaned on the idea that executive power is vested in the president. "These officers were to serve as envoys of the President, not his equals," he wrote. "They ought to be considered as the assistants or deputies of the Chief Magistrate."

What the White House said

Scharf called Slaughter "an immensely important case" that "corrected very, very poor and quite ancient precedent."

"A president who can't control who's exercising the executive power that is vested in him, that's a cabined presidency," he said.

He praised Roberts for laying out the theory of a unitary executive branch. "The Supreme Court did a masterful job," Scharf said. "Really got it right."

He also credited his own shop. "I was proud that we, as the White House and obviously the Department of Justice, got to play a role in correcting that historic constitutional wrong," Scharf said.

Solicitor General John Sauer, who argued the case for the administration, was equally emphatic. "It's hard to overstate the importance of Slaughter," he said. "It matters for the structure of our government and it matters for the preservation of our liberties going forward."

Scharf acknowledged the context. The White House has moved fast under Trump. "We have a very energetic executive in President Trump now," he said. "We want energy in the executive, always."

The dissent

The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. They argued Congress was meant to control agencies like the FTC and other executive boards.

Sotomayor wrote the sharpest language. "The Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted," she wrote, "elevating him above his once coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws."

That is the core dispute. The majority reads Article II as putting the removal power in the president's hands. The dissenters read the Constitution as giving Congress authority to design agencies that answer to it.

The Federal Reserve exception

The Court did not hand the president a blank check. In a separate case, Trump v. Cook, the justices rejected presidential authority to fire members of the Federal Reserve's board of governors.

So the line is not "the president can fire anyone." The Court's own rulings put the central bank on one side of it and agencies like the FTC on the other.

For taxpayers, the practical effect is a shift in who answers for what. Commissions that once operated at arm's length from the White House now serve at the president's pleasure, and the president and his appointees own their decisions. That cuts both ways for any administration, this one and the next. A future Democratic president inherits the same firing power Scharf is praising.

What comes next

The sources do not say which agencies beyond the FTC are now within the president's reach. They also do not say whether the administration plans further removals under the Slaughter ruling. The Court's phrasing, "most" independent agencies, leaves room for more litigation over where the exceptions sit, and Trump v. Cook shows at least one exists.