Supreme Court Rules Trump Can Fire Independent Agency Heads

Energy policy and regulatory attorney Willie Phillips was interviewed for an Energy Intelligence article exploring the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Slaughter, in which the court determined the president has authority to fire the heads of independent federal agencies. The case stemmed from President Donald Trump's firing of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. The majority upheld the constitutionality of the administration's decision to fire Slaughter, overturning the 1935 precedent set in Humphrey's Executor v. United States when justices sided with an FTC commissioner fired by then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mr. Phillips, the former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) chairman, commented on what the opinion means for agencies like FERC and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that exercise broad regulatory activity in the energy sector.

"The big question is what impact this will have on regulatory certainty," he told Energy Intelligence. "Agencies like FERC...benefited from having this position of making decisions that are cabined from political pressure. So when you add in this element of expanded presidential power, the question becomes, going forward, can they maintain the level of public trust and confidence that they've enjoyed based on the facts, based on the evidence, based on due process, and not have it be questioned by political influence."

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