The Supreme Court just handed President Trump a massive win — and Justice Neil Gorsuch made it clear this is only the beginning of dismantling the administrative state.
In a 6-3 ruling Monday, the Court declared Trump can fire Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter at will, overturning nearly 90 years of precedent that shielded independent agency officials from presidential removal.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the FTC “unquestionably exercises executive power” and therefore its commissioners must answer to the president.
“The fourth branch’s powers still exist; they have just been reassigned to the President.”
But Gorsuch’s concurring opinion went much further — signaling the Court’s next target is the sprawling power of federal agencies conservatives call the “deep state.”
For decades, independent agencies like the FTC, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and National Labor Relations Board have combined lawmaking, enforcement, and judicial functions under one roof.
They write regulations carrying the force of law. They investigate violations. They adjudicate cases through in-house proceedings — acting as prosecutor, judge, and jury.
Gorsuch argued that setup is fundamentally unconstitutional now that these agencies are clearly under presidential control.
“The power to write new regulatory crimes still exists,” Gorsuch wrote. “The ability to judge disputes in-house remains, but now the house is white.”
Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, said Gorsuch just laid out the roadmap for the next wave of challenges.
“I think the next step in this type of litigation won’t be looking at firings per se, but really trying to make sure all of these administrative agencies actually fall into one of our constitutional buckets,” Severino said. “Are they executive agencies or are they legislative or are they judicial? You can’t straddle all of this.”
“There still remains to be more work going back and taking out of these agencies that now are properly under executive control the activities that really aren’t fundamentally executive in nature.”
Haley Proctor, a constitutional law professor at Notre Dame Law School, agreed Gorsuch’s opinion is a blueprint for future cases.
“I do think what Justice Gorsuch is pointing out is that this is the first step toward rethinking the way in which the administrative state is empowered and structured,” Proctor said.
She said the concurrence raises the possibility Congress may have to reclaim powers it handed to agencies decades ago — or assign judicial responsibilities back to Article III courts.
“If we’re concerned about the amount of power that the Federal Trade Commission has, then the next step would be to reconsider giving that power to the Federal Trade Commission because some of the decisions that it’s making could be made by Congress instead and some of the decisions that it’s making could be made by the courts,” Proctor said.
Roberts’ majority opinion stopped short of deciding how much power Congress can delegate to agencies. The Court said questions involving other agencies like the Federal Reserve will have to wait for future cases.
But Gorsuch made his position clear: the Constitution provides the tools to dismantle the modern administrative state and restore lawmaking to Congress and judicial power to the courts.
“From here, the only sure path is to finish the journey we start today and restore legislative and judicial powers to where they belong: in Congress and the courts,” Gorsuch wrote.
The FTC ruling hands Trump greater control over executive agencies — and conservative legal groups are already preparing the next round of challenges to strip independent agencies of powers critics say belong to Congress and the courts.
