Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, HOUSE NEWS—Raskin, Pallone ‘demand’ Trump reverse FTC Commissioner firings, (Mar 25, 2025)

By Lynn Stanton, TR Daily

Their letter condemns the firings as “meant to empower oligarchs who were granted seats in the front row of your inauguration while harming the rest of the American people and the rule of law.”

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 decisions” to remove Federal Trade Commission members Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. President Trump fired the two Democratic members of the FTC last week, although both commissioners referred to the action as illegal in posts on X.

28 senators last week also called on President Trump to rescind the firings of Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya, in their own letter of March 19.

The Federal Trade Commission Act says the president may remove an FTC commissioner “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” 15 U.S.C. §41. The Supreme Court upheld tenure protection for FTC commissioners in its 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.

Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris recently informed Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) that the Department of Justice would no longer defend the constitutionality of statutory tenure protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which bar the president from removing them except for cause.

Reps. Raskin and Pallone said in their letter to the president, “Your attempt to fire these Commissioners without cause violates the law, intrudes into Congress’ Article I constitutional legislative authority, undermines and weakens our democracy, and jeopardizes the FTC’s important consumer protection and antitrust work that has benefitted Americans for more than a century.”

They added, “By seeking to fire two Commissioners of this vital independent agency without good cause, you are making it easier for companies, including Twitter/X, Amazon, Meta, and Google to evade these laws, which will result in higher prices, and less privacy for consumers. This move is meant to empower oligarchs who were granted seats in the front row of your inauguration while harming the rest of the American people and the rule of law.”

“The precedent established under Humphrey’s Executor has been reaffirmed by the Supreme Court numerous times in the 90 years since the case was decided. Having failed to allege a proper cause for the Commissioners’ removal, your firing of Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya is plainly unlawful,” the lawmakers said.

“We demand that you reverse these unlawful and harmful firings and comply with your obligations to the American people under the Constitution and the law passed by Congress,” Reps. Raskin and Pallone concluded

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