The U.S. Supreme Court has approved President Donald Trump’s request to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The decision follows an emergency injunction filed by the Trump administration, which sought to halt lower court rulings that had blocked her dismissal and to clarify whether a president has the authority to fire leaders of independent federal agencies.

The Justice Department argued that the FTC’s powers have significantly expanded since the 1935 Supreme Court decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which had limited presidential removal powers. Solicitor General D. John Sauer claimed that FTC commissioners now wield “substantial executive authority,” placing them within the president’s constitutional removal powers.

In March, Trump removed Slaughter and another Democratic commissioner from the FTC. A federal district court ordered her reinstatement in July, and a subsequent appeals court decision said Trump could not remove her at that time. However, the Supreme Court overturned that ruling, once again siding with the administration and allowing Slaughter’s dismissal to proceed.

This decision is part of a broader pattern in which the Court has supported the Trump administration in multiple emergency docket cases. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have recently criticized lower courts for allegedly defying Supreme Court precedents. Gorsuch warned that while lower courts may disagree, they are “never free to defy” the Court’s rulings.

Liberal justices, including Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, strongly dissented. They accused the conservative majority of promoting “lawlessness” and shifting legal standards to consistently favor Trump’s executive actions, raising concerns about judicial overreach and fairness.