WASHINGTON, DC – Following today’s decision at the Supreme Court in Trump v. Slaughter, a case in which the Court considered whether the Constitution forbids independent agencies structured like the Federal Trade Commission and whether Trump’s attempted firing of Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter was unlawful, Constitutional Accountability Center Deputy Chief Counsel Brian Frazelle issued the following reaction:

Today’s decision is another chapter in the Roberts Court’s disrespect for democracy and its enabling of an imperial presidency. For 150 years, our elected representatives have created independent agencies to carry out important work safeguarding the American people. Today, six Justices of the Roberts Court have declared that they know better, overruling this longstanding practice and the Supreme Court’s own century-old precedent approving of independent agencies. In doing so, the conservative Justices have substituted their own vision of boundless presidential power for the arrangement that the democratically accountable political branches have worked out themselves over generations.

This decision is an affront not only to democracy and judicial humility, but also to the original meaning of the Constitution. As Justice Sotomayor’s dissent powerfully explains, nothing in the Constitution’s text or the debates surrounding its ratification supports the majority’s view of unbounded presidential removal power. The majority’s attempt to show otherwise is a farce. And by preventing Congress from requiring good cause to fire regulatory officials, the Roberts Court today has given presidents a power that not even the kings of England possessed.

Commissions like the FTC were created to be led by multiple members who serve as a check on one another and have some insulation from political pressure. Congress might never have given such power to these agencies if they were subject to the President’s every whim. But today, the conservative Justices have handed that power to Donald Trump, overriding the choices our nation has long made through the political process.