By Jody Godoy
(Reuters) – Two U.S. Federal Trade Commission members fired by President Donald Trump sued him on Thursday, saying their removals violated federal law and a 90-year-old U.S. Supreme Court precedent upholding agency independence.
Trump’s firing of Democratic commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter on March 18 defied a law allowing the president to fire FTC commissioners only for good cause, such as neglecting their duties, the two commissioners said in a lawsuit filed in Washington.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld that law in the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., after the last time a U.S. president attempted to fire an FTC commissioner without cause.
The ruling is a cornerstone of regulatory government in the U.S., shielding independent, bipartisan multi-member agencies from direct White House control. A ruling overturning it could reverberate far and wide, shaking the independence of agencies that regulate road safety, stock markets, telecommunications and monetary policy.
“It is bedrock, binding precedent that a President cannot remove an FTC Commissioner without cause. And yet that is precisely what has happened here,” the two said in their lawsuit.
They seek an order declaring the terminations unlawful and allowing them to resume their duties.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement on Thursday that Trump has constitutional authority over “agencies that wield substantial executive power.”
“My Democrat former colleagues are entitled to their day in court, but I have no doubt that President Trump’s lawful powers will ultimately be confirmed,” he said.
Trump already faces other lawsuits for firing members of independent agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board.
Two federal judges in Washington, D.C., have said Trump’s firing of NLRB Member Gwynne Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board Member Cathy Harris violated federal law.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
