Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, AGENCY NEWS: FTC Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya sue President Trump over removal, (Mar 28, 2025)

By Justin Marcus Smith, J.D.

The Commissioners’ complaint said they brought the action to “vindicate their right to serve the remainder of their respective terms, to defend the integrity of the Commission, and to continue their work for the American People.”

FTC Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya have sued President Trump over his March 18 decision to remove them from their Commissioner positions in the federal district court in the District of Columbia. The six-count complaint seeking declaratory, injunctive, and mandamus relief also named fellow FTC Commissioners Andrew Ferguson, Melissa Holyoak, and FTC Executive Director David Robbins as defendants. The complaint stated Slaughter and Bedoya “will not and do not accept” President Trump’s “unlawful” firing action. “If the President can ignore a 90-year-old Supreme Court ruling to fire us with no cause, it won’t just shatter norms. It’ll ripple through the whole economy,” said Bedoya, in a companion Protect Democracy Project, Inc. press release. In the same release, Slaughter emphasized the consumer and competition protection roles of the FTC. She added the FTC “can’t be bought with campaign contributions or bullied by politicians.” Attorneys associated with the Washington, D.C. -based Protect Democracy Project and Clarick Gueron Reisbaum LLP represent Slaughter and Bedoya. FTC Chair Ferguson said his former colleagues are “entitled to their day in court” but expressed “no doubt that President Trump’s lawful powers will ultimately be confirmed” (Slaughter v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-00909 (D.D.C. Mar. 27, 2025)).

Background. As previously reported, on March 18, President Donald Trump fired FTC Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya, purportedly by email, without any stated legal cause. The move left the Commission with only Chair Andrew N. Ferguson and Commissioner Melissa Holyoak. Both are Republicans. With the departure of former Chair Lina Khan, the FTC presently has only two of a possible five commissioners, so it is effectively without a quorum to operate. However, Chair Ferguson stated the FTC’s work will continue.

President Trump nominated Slaughter, a Democrat, to be FTC Commissioner in 2018. President Biden renominated Slaughter in 2023, and the Senate confirmed her again in a “bipartisan slate” that included Republican Commissioner-defendants Ferguson and Holyoak. President Biden nominated Bedoya, a Democrat, in 2021.

President Trump appointed Ferguson as FTC Chair effective January 20, 2025. Republican Mark Meador, President Trump’s nominee to fill the Commission vacancy created by the expired term and departure of former Chair Lina Khan, awaits confirmation in the Senate. The Slaughter and Bedoya complaint noted that the FTC Act provides that no more than three of the FTC’s five Commissioners can be of the same political party.

Lawmaker reactions. Various Democrat lawmakers quickly disapproved or outright condemned the firings or “attempted firings.” Perhaps most notably, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone Jr. (D., N.J.) sent a letter to President Trump to “demand” that he reverse the “completely lawless” decision (see Antitrust Law Daily, Mar. 24, 2025).

Expected challenge. Slaughter and Bedoya were expected to challenge the President’s removal decision in no small part because a federal district court in Washington, D.C., already delivered a setback to President Trump’s attempt to fire National Labor Relations Board (NLRG) member Gwynne Wilcox. The court held the Wilcox termination unlawful under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Humphrey's Executor v. U.S., 295 U.S. 602 (1935). Humphrey’s Executor upheld a statutory provision restricting removal of FTC members. Both matters are now widely expected to make their way to the Supreme Court.

Substantial power. The complaint alleged that the email removing the Commissioners included a President Trump message that acknowledged Humphrey’s Executor while stating, according to the Complaint, that the case “does not fit the principal officers who head the FTC today” because the FTC presently “exercises substantial executive power.” The complaint contended that the President’s message cited Seila Law without acknowledging that opinion was about a single-Director independent agency vested with significant power, i.e., the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. SeeSeila Law LLC v. Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, 591 U.S. 197, 228 (2020).

Time capsule. The Slaughter and Bedoya complaint, which reads like a legal time capsule on the question of at-will Presidential removal restrictions, emphasized the President can only remove a Commissioner for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” See 15 U.S.C. § 41. The complaint contended that agencies like the FTC, led by commissioners protected from at-will Presidential removal, “have existed since the earliest days of the Constitution.” It noted fuirther that Congress has “created numerous agencies, boards, and commissions whose members are protected from at-will removal” both before and after Humphrey’s Executor. Listed examples included the Federal Reserve; Postal Service; National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB); National Labor Relations Board (NLRB); and, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), “among others.”

The complaint also quoted FTC Chair-defendant Ferguson as having affirmed, during his Senate confirmation, that the Supreme Court has held that FTC removal provisions are consistent with Article II of the Constitution and, moreover, that the Supreme Court is the only actor that can overrule its own precedent in Humphrey’s Executor.

The complaint includes claims for violation of the FTC Act, 1Administrative Procedure Act, and violation of the Separation of Powers, U.S. Const. art. 1, § 8; art. II, §§ 2, 3.

Relief requested. Slaughter and Bedoya asked the court to declare the President’s removal decision unlawful and that they are Commissioners; declare that FTC Commissioners are subject to Presidential removal only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office; and enjoin defendants Ferguson, Holyoak, and Robbins by ordering them to treat Slaughter and Bedoya as FTC Commissioners, including by permitting them access to their office, staff, electronic devices, wages, and so forth, and that they take no further actions to “obstruct” Slaughter and Bedoya from carrying out their duties as FTC Commissioners.

Counsel comments. In a Protect Democracy Project press release, Project Special Counsel Amit Agarwal commented that the “President’s attempt to terminate Commissioners Bedoya and Slaughter is contrary to federal law and nearly a century of Supreme Court precedent.” The release noted that Agarwal previously served as Florida’s Solicitor General under now-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and clerked for Justice Alito and then-Judge Kavanaugh.

In the same release, Clarick Gueron Reisbaum LLP Partner Aaron Crow said his firm is “honored” to represent the Commissioners “in their effort to preserve the integrity of the FTC and continue to serve the American people.” He added, “Humphrey’s Executor has been settled law for a lifetime and it is beyond dispute that a President cannot remove an FTC Commissioner without cause. We look forward to our clients’ day in court.”

Ferguson comment. FTC Chair Ferguson, in addition to expressing “no doubt” of the outcome, offered his assurance that the FTC “will continue its tireless work to protect consumers from unlawful monopolies and fraud.” On the merits, and in apparent reference to the complaint’s account of President Trump’s cite to Seila Law, Ferguson said he has stated on numerous occasions that the President is vested with all executive power, including “constitutional authority to remove commissioners from agencies that wield substantial executive power.”

The Case is No. 1:25-cv-00909.

Attorneys: Benjamin Leon Berwick (Project Democracy Project, Inc.) for Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.

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