Supreme Court appears likely to approve Trump's firing of FTC Democrat

"Justice Samuel Alito suggested that a ruling for Slaughter could open the way for Congress to convert various executive branch agencies into "multi-member commissions with members protected from plenary presidential removal authority." "I could go down the list... How about Veterans Affairs? How about Interior? Labor? EPA? Commerce? Education? What am I missing?" Alito said. "Agriculture," Justice Neil Gorsuch responded. The official transcript notes that Gorsuch's response was met with laughter."

"Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed skepticism about the power of independent agencies, saying, "I think broad delegations to unaccountable independent agencies raise enormous constitutional and real-world problems for individual liberty." He said the court's approach with "the major questions doctrine over the last several years" has been to "make sure that we are not just being casual about assuming that Congress has delegated major questions of political or economic significance to independent agencies, or to any agencies for that matter.""

""My understanding was that independent agencies exist because Congress has decided that some issues, some matters, some areas should be handled in this way by nonpartisan experts, that Congress is saying that expertise matters with respect to aspects of the economy and transportation and the various independent agencies that we have," Jackson said. "So having a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the Ph.D.s and replacing them with loyalists and people who don't know any"

Justice Samuel Alito warned that a ruling for Slaughter could allow Congress to convert executive agencies into multi-member commissions whose members are shielded from presidential removal. He listed agencies including Veterans Affairs, Interior, Labor, EPA, Commerce, and Education; Justice Neil Gorsuch added Agriculture. Justice Brett Kavanaugh criticized broad delegations to unaccountable independent agencies and invoked the major questions doctrine to limit casual congressional delegations of major political or economic decisions. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan warned of real-world dangers and the risk of giving the president uncontrolled, unchecked power to replace experts with loyalists. The case appears likely to split along ideological lines.

Read at Ars Technica