A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has emphatically rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to delay reinstating Rebecca Slaughter, a former Biden-appointed Federal Trade Commissioner, calling the government’s arguments “woefully deficient” and grounded in efforts to “continue engaging in unlawful action.”
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan, appointed by President Joe Biden, denied the Justice Department’s emergency request to stay her earlier ruling declaring Slaughter’s termination invalid. In a sharply worded seven-page order issued this week, AliKhan reaffirmed that Slaughter remains “a rightful Commissioner of the FTC,” invoking longstanding Supreme Court precedent to support her decision.
“The court refuses to allow Defendants to continue breaking the law while this litigation proceeds,” AliKhan wrote, rejecting the government’s claim that a stay was necessary to avoid potential harm.
Citing 90-Year-Old Precedent
At the core of the dispute is the 1935 Supreme Court decision Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which limits a president’s ability to remove commissioners from independent agencies like the FTC without cause. Judge AliKhan emphasized that the facts of Slaughter’s case “almost identically mirror” that landmark case, which held that removal must be based on “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance.”
Despite the Trump administration’s argument that such for-cause removal protections are unconstitutional, AliKhan made clear that lower courts cannot disregard Supreme Court precedent unless it is explicitly overturned.
“Even when a lower court believes that existing precedent is in tension with some other line of decisions, it cannot unilaterally assume that established law has been implicitly overruled,” she wrote. “Until the current Supreme Court speaks clearly as to the fate of Humphrey’s Executor, this court cannot—and will not—presume that a ninety-year-old ruling is no longer good law.”
Rebuke of Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket
The DOJ cited a string of recent Supreme Court shadow docket orders—brief, unsigned opinions that granted President Trump the authority to remove other independent agency officials, including those at the MSPB, NLRB, and OSC. But AliKhan dismissed the relevance of those orders, noting they lacked full briefing or a merits decision.
“The Court expressly did not decide whether the NLRB or MSPB falls within a recognized presidential-removal exception,” she noted. “This court will not turn a preliminary determination into a license to contravene nearly a century of precedent.”
D.C. Circuit Already Stepped In
Though the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has since issued a temporary administrative stay on AliKhan’s reinstatement order, the judge took issue with how quickly the Trump administration bypassed her court.
AliKhan pointed out that the DOJ moved for emergency relief at the appellate level just one day after she issued a briefing schedule—without waiting for the lower court’s process to play out or disclosing that briefing was underway.
“Defendants declined to wait for the ordinary stay process,” she noted, adding that while the Circuit’s stay is independently effective, she felt obligated to rule on the pending motion.
“A Mockery of the FTC”
In perhaps the most blistering section of her ruling, Judge AliKhan directly countered the administration’s claim that her order infringed on the president’s constitutional authority.
“They complain that the court’s order blocks them from illegally dismantling the independence of an agency that Congress deliberately shielded from executive overreach,” she wrote. “To entertain that complaint would make a mockery of the FTC, to say nothing of the separation of powers.”
Quoting prior precedent, she emphasized that the public has a vital interest in “having governmental agencies abide by the federal laws that govern their existence and operations.”
For now, Slaughter’s status remains in limbo as litigation continues. But Judge AliKhan made clear that her court will not permit the executive branch to violate established law under the guise of constitutional interpretation.
