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UPDATE: The Trump Administration immediately appealed Judge AliKhan’s order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. On July 21, 2025, the Court of Appeals entered an administrative stay, thus temporarily blocking Slaughter’s reinstatement to the FTC. In a one page order, the Court of Appeals explained that the purpose of the stay is to “give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the motion for a stay pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion.”[1]

Notably, in the two prior, recent cases concerning the Trump Administration’s attempt to remove members of the MSPB and NLRB, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit similarly granted administrative stays on an emergency basis, but, after having had the time to consider the issues, vacated its orders staying the district courts’ judgments in those cases, and held that the Trump Administration had not demonstrated the requisite strong showing that it is likely succeed on the merits.[2] However, as noted above, the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently stepped in and issued a stay of the district court orders pending the disposition of the appeals in the Court of Appeals.[3]

We will continue to update this advisory as this matter develops.

[1] Slaughter v. Trump, No. 25-5261 (D.C. Cir. July 21, 2025).

[2] Harris v. Bessent, 2025 WL 1021435, at *2 (D.C. Cir. Apr. 7, 2025).

[3] Trump v. Wilcox, 145 S. Ct. 1415 (2025).

* * *

FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, who was fired without cause in March 2025, has prevailed in her lawsuit against President Trump challenging her termination. On Thursday, July 17, 2025, District Judge Loren L. AliKhan issued a thorough decision granting Slaughter’s motion for summary judgment, declaring Slaughter’s firing illegal and without effect, and issuing a permanent injunction that effectively reinstates Slaughter to the FTC.[1] The decision also dismissed as moot the claims brought by former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who was also fired without cause in March, but who has since resigned from the FTC due to a financial need to accept other work.

The decision rests on a 90-year old Supreme Court decision, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States,[2] which upheld as constitutional the FTC Act’s protections against removal of FTC Commissioners without cause. The court explained that although there are some indications that the Supreme Court wants to move away from Humphrey’s Executor, the case remains directly controlling precedent that the District Court is bound to follow. The court further held that, even though losing one’s employment is ordinarily insufficient to warrant an injunction, a position on the FTC is different from an ordinary job, and permitting the removal of FTC Commissioners without cause would destroy the FTC’s legislatively crafted independence in a way that harms not only the Commissioner, but also the FTC and Congress. Thus, the court found that an injunction was warranted.

This decision is a significant one in a line of recent district court decisions finding that the Trump administration acted illegally in firing government workers. Four months ago, in Harris v. Bessent,[3] a district court held that Trump’s attempt to remove a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board (“MSPB”) was unlawful under Humphrey’s Executor. Shortly thereafter, in Wilcox v. Trump,[4] another district court blocked Trump’s attempt to remove a member of the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”), similarly relying on Humphrey’s Executor. As Judge AliKhan notes in her decision, the Supreme Court has stayed both of these cases pending appeal, suggesting that the Trump administration may ultimately prevail at the highest court.[5] Judge AliKhan noted that she has “no illusions about where this case’s journey leads,” but that only the Supreme Court has the prerogative to overrule Humphrey’s Executor.[6]

We provide a summary of Judge AliKhan’s decision below.

1. Background

Congress established the FTC in 1914 by passing the Federal Trade Commission Act (the “FTC Act”).[7] The FTC’s purpose is to prevent unfair methods in competition, and the Commission is empowered to: investigate businesses for potential violations of law, require businesses to respond to inquiries about their practices, and order businesses to cease and desist from illegal practices. The FTC also retains quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative abilities.

Congress designed the FTC to be led by a bipartisan group of five Commissioners, no more than three of whom could belong to a single political party.[8] Significantly, Congress enabled the President to remove Commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”[9]

2. The Court Held That Humphrey’s Executor Controls the Outcome of This Case.

The court found it “patently obvious” that the outcome of this case is controlled by Humphrey’s Executor.[10] Humphrey’s Executor involved an almost identical set of facts to those present here. There, President Roosevelt fired FTC Commissioner William Humphrey because the two disagreed on policy issues. Because the FTC Act only permits removal of Commissioners “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” Humphrey refused to accept his termination up to his death. Following his death, Humphrey’s estate sued for backpay.

President Roosevelt argued that it would violate Article II of the Constitution if he could not fire an FTC Commissioner at will. He pointed to an earlier decision by the Supreme Court, Myers v. United States,[11] which found unconstitutional a statute requiring the President to obtain the Senate’s consent before removing a U.S. postmaster. In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court sided with Humphrey’s estate and held that the FTC Act’s removal protections for Commissioners did not violate Article II.[12] The Supreme Court distinguished Myers, holding that whereas a postmaster performed only “executive functions” and lacked any “legislative or judicial power,” the FTC “is an administrative body created by Congress to carry into effect legislative policies” and “to perform other specified duties as a legislative or as a judicial aid.”[13] Accordingly, the Supreme Court held that the FTC Act’s for-cause removal protections were constitutional.

Judge AliKhan noted that Humphrey’s Executor involved the exact same provision of the FTC Act that Slaughter seeks to enforce here (the for-cause removal protection within 15 U.S.C. § 41) and it’s undisputed that Slaughter was not fired for cause. She further held that Humphrey’s Executor “remains good law today,” and cited numerous Supreme Court decisions over the span of the past ninety years wherein the Supreme Court declined to revisit or overrule it.[14]

Judge AliKhan recognized that the Supreme Court has “retrenched” from the holding of Humphrey’s Executor over the years, and that it has “suggested that the modern-day FTC has outgrown its 1935 counterpart.”[15] For example, in Morrison v. Olsen, a 1988 case, the Supreme Court noted in dicta that “it is hard to dispute that the powers of the FTC at the time of Humphrey’s Executor would at the present time be considered ‘executive,’ at least to some degree.”[16] And, in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a 2020 case, the Supreme Court observed—again in dicta—that the “conclusion that the FTC did not exercise executive power has not withstood the test of time.”[17] However, Judge AliKhan explained that even if she were confident that the Supreme Court would eliminate the FTC’s removal protections, she could not rule in Defendants’ favor in this case, because only the Supreme Court has the prerogative to overrule its own decisions.[18] Thus, she held that Humphrey’s Executor is directly controlling precedent that she is bound to follow.

3. The Court Rejected Defendants’ Arguments That The FTC Has Changed Since Humphrey’s Executor.

The Defendants (comprising President Trump and several FTC officials) attempted to “sidestep” the application of Humphrey’s Executor by arguing that the FTC has changed significantly since that case was decided in 1935, and that the Humphrey’s Executor Court would not intend for its ruling to embrace the FTC as it exists today.[19]

First, Defendants asserted that, whereas the Humphrey’s Executor Court downplayed the FTC’s executive powers, the current FTC exercises significant executive powers. In particular, it retains investigative, adjudicatory, and rulemaking power.[20]

Judge AliKhan rejected this argument, finding that “the FTC possessed each of these powers from the moment it was created and well before . . . Humphrey’s Executor,” and that the Humphrey’s Executor Court recognized each of these powers.[21] Second, Defendants argued that “the FTC has acquired immense new authority since 1935,” having gained consumer-protection authority in 1938, the ability to seek preliminary and permanent injunctions in federal court in 1973, and the ability to seek monetary penalties against private parties in 1975.[22]

Judge AliKhan rejected this argument as well, holding that these “new” abilities are simply “outgrowths of the FTC’s original powers and did not mark a meaningful change to the character of the office.”[23] She explained that the “consumer-protection” authorization amounted to a mere adjustment in purpose and did not fundamentally change the way in which the FTC wields its power or the structure of the agency.[24] As for the powers to seek injunctive relief and pursue monetary penalties, the court explained that these are tied to the FTC’s original ability to issue and enforce cease-and-desist orders.[25] And, while FTC’s authority to pursue monetary penalties is a “quintessentially executive power,” the Supreme Court has acknowledged that some executive powers may be exercised by officers with removal protections.[26] Judge AliKhan also found it significant that the Supreme Court has adhered to Humphrey’s Executor even after the FTC gained each of its “new” powers.[27]

4. The Court Held that Declaratory and Injunctive Relief are Appropriate Remedies.

Having found Defendants’ actions illegal, the court next turned to the available remedies. Judge AliKhan noted that the power to issue declaratory relief rests in her own discretion, and is appropriate here because issuing a declaratory judgment in this case that the termination was illegal would settle Slaughter’s status and serve as a necessary reminder as to the state of the law.[28] As for injunctive relief, the court noted that it cannot enjoin the President directly, but it can provide adequate equitable remedies to “removed” officers by enjoining subordinate officials instead.[29] The court then turned to the question whether injunctive relief was warranted, which requires a finding that (i) the plaintiff suffered an irreparable injury; (ii) the remedies available at law are inadequate to compensate for that injury; (iii) the balance of hardships between the plaintiff and defendant warrants a remedy in equity; and (iv) the public interest would not be disserved by a permanent injunction.[30] Although losing one’s employment is ordinarily insufficient to show irreparable harm as required to obtain an injunction, the court held that serving on the FTC is “different in caliber and kind” from other types of work, and in losing her position on the FTC, Slaughter “lost the ability to influence federal decision-making on anticompetitive practices or take steps to protect American consumers from deceptive and exploitive businesses.”[31] The court further held that permitting Slaughter’s removal would “destroy[]” the FTC’s “legislatively crafted independence” in a way that harms not only Slaughter, but also the FTC and Congress, and that amounts to “an exceptionally unique harm distinct from the mine run of wrongful termination cases.”[32]

The court also held that there was no available remedy other than an injunction. Judge AliKhan explained: “A remedial paycheck is cold comfort if the FTC’s very independence can be tossed aside at the relatively low cost of providing backpay.”[33]

As for the balance of equities and the public interest, Judge AliKhan found that these also supported equitable relief. She rejected the argument that President Trump would be harmed by this injunction, holding that he “cannot suffer harm from an injunction that merely ends an unlawful practice or reads a statute as required.”[34] She further explained that the Constitution “does not task the President with taking care that his preferred policies be faithfully executed; it requires that he faithfully execute the laws of the United States,” including the FTC Act, “in which Congress enshrined independence-preserving removal protections for FTC Commissioners more than a century ago.”[35]

Finally, the court acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s recent stay in Wilcox and Harris—the two district court decisions that granted permanent injunctions to wrongfully terminated members of the NLRB and MSPB, respectively—weighs against Slaughter’s arguments regarding irreparable harm and the balance of the equities in this case. However, Judge AliKhan noted that the stay “does not represent a final, definitive, and reasoned decision on the merits,” and thus declined to upend her own analysis based on a procedural order that failed even to address Humphrey’s Executor or the FTC.

Accordingly, the court granted a permanent injunction.

5. The Court Found Bedoya’s Claims Moot.

As for Slaughter’s colleague and fellow Plaintiff, Bedoya, the Court held that his resignation from the FTC moots his request. “Now that he has voluntarily relinquished the role he was fighting to keep, the court cannot grant injunctive relief restoring him to that role. There would be no remedial effect of this court’s instructing Defendants to treat Mr. Bedoya as an FTC Commissioner when he himself no longer claims that position.”[36] Accordingly, Judge AliKhan dismissed Bedoya’s claims.

Wiggin and Dana routinely advises clients in connection with the full range of antitrust matters, including potential transactions and representations before the FTC, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, and offices of state attorneys general. Wiggin and Dana also regularly advises clients concerning evolving antitrust and regulatory landscapes.

[1] Slaughter v. Trump, No. CV 25-909 (LLA), 2025 WL 1984396 (D.D.C. July 17, 2025).

[2] 295 U.S. 602 (1935).

[3] 775 F. Supp. 3d 164 (D.D.C. 2025).

[4] 775 F. Supp. 3d 215 (D.D.C. 2025).

[5 2025 WL 1984396, at *10.

[6] Id. at *15.

[7] Pub. L. No. 63-203, 38 Stat. 717 (1914) (codified as amended at 15 U.S.C. § 41 et seq.).

[8] Id. § 41.

[9] Id.

[10] Slaughter, 2025 WL 1984396, at *7.

[11] 272 U.S. 52 (1926).

[12] Humphrey’s Executor, 295 U.S. at 629-32.

[13] Id. at 627-28.

[14] Id. (citing Wiener v. United States, 357 U.S. 349, 356 (1958); Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 687 (1988); Free Enter. Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U.S. 477 (2010); and Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, 591 U.S. 197, 204).

[15] Id. at *14.

[16] 487 U.S. at 689 n.28 (1988).

[17] 591 U.S. at 216 n.2 (2020).

[18] 2025 WL 1984396, at *14.

[19] Id. at *11.

[20] Id.

[21] Id. at *11-12 (citing the FTC Act).

[22] Id. at *12.

[23] Id. (citing Humphrey’s Ex’r, 295 U.S. at 632).

[24] Id.

[25] Id. at *13.

[26] Id. (citing Seila Law LLC, 591 U.S. at 219 and Wiener, 357 U.S. at 356).

[27] Id. at *14 (citing Wiener, 357 U.S. 349; Morrison, 487 U.S. 654; Free Enter. Fund, 561 U.S. 477; Seila Law, 591 U.S. 197; and Collins v. Yellen, 594 U.S. 220 (2021)).

[28] Id. at *16.

[29] Id. at *16-17 (citing Swan v. Clinton, 100 F.3d 973 (D.C. Cir. 1996) and Severino v. Biden, 71 F.4th 1038, 1042 (D.C. Cir. 2023)).

[30] Id. at *17.

[31] Id. at *18.

[32] Id.

[33] Id.

[34] Id. at *19.

[35] Id. at *18.

[36] Id. at *4.