Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya on July 13, 2023. Photo: Shuran Huang for The Washington Post via Getty Images
The two Democratic FTC commissioners President Trump fired last week sued the administration in federal court on Thursday.
Why it matters: The suit sets up a showdown over whether the president can fire Senate-confirmed appointees of independent agencies.
- Groups hoping to expand the power of the executive branch have been angling to challenge a 1935 Supreme Court case, Humphrey's Executor, that only allows the removal of such appointees for narrow causes.
What they're saying: The work of the FTC to protect consumers and promote competition is vital because the agency "can't be bought with campaign contributions or bullied by politicians," Slaughter said in a release.
- "Commissioner Bedoya and I may be the ones with our names on this lawsuit — but if you buy things at the grocery store or the pharmacy or the gas station and you care about inflation and the health of our nation's economy, this is your lawsuit, too," she said.
Bedoya and Slaughter filed the case in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, represented by Clarick Gueron Reisbaum LLP and the nonprofit Protect Democracy.
- The lawsuit alleges that "the President's action is indefensible under governing law" and that being protected from removal from their jobs is supported by laws governing a number of agencies.
- It calls for Bedoya and Slaughter to resume work at the FTC and for the court to rule that their firings were unlawful.
Special counsel for Protect Democracy is Amit Agarwal, previously Florida's solicitor general and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh before he was on the high court.
- In the release announcing the lawsuit, Agarwal called the firings "contrary to federal law and nearly a century of Supreme Court precedent."
