In Trump v. Slaughter (June 29, 2026, No. 25-332), the Supreme Court held 6-3 that the president has unlimited authority to remove members of most independent federal agencies, overturning its landmark 1935 decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. The decision significantly expands presidential authority over independent federal agencies and is poised to reshape how labor and employment agencies like the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) operate going forward. The decision has practical implications for employers whose workplace compliance obligations are shaped by those agencies’ enforcement priorities and regulatory guidance.
What Employers Need to Know
Background
Trump v. Slaughter arose from President Trump’s March 2025 firing of FTC Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, both Democrats. Slaughter sued, arguing that the Federal Trade Commission Act only permitted removal for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” She won in both the D.C. district court and the D.C. Circuit, but the Supreme Court stayed those decisions when it took the case.
Similar challenges had been brought by former members of the Merit Systems Protection Board, the EEOC, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority. Notably, former NLRB Member Gwynne Wilcox — whom President Trump removed in early 2025 — filed a parallel challenge based on the NLRA’s analogous removal provision, which permits removal of NLRB Members only for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
The Court Overturns 90 Years of Precedent
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that Humphrey’s Executor “has not withstood the test of time.” The majority reasoned that officials who exercise the president’s executive authority must be removable by the president at will, and only then, Roberts wrote, can they remain accountable to the president — and the president to the people.
The decision is the culmination of the Court’s gradually narrowing view of Humphrey’s Executor since 2010, following its decisions in Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB, Seila Law v. CFPB, and Collins v. Yellen, each of which incrementally limited the precedent’s reach. The majority declined to “define the bounds” of its ruling, calling into question removal protections for officials not only at the FTC, but across the full range of independent agencies.
In a companion case, Trump v. Cook, the Court expressly excepted the Federal Reserve from its holding, reasoning that the nation’s long historical tradition of separating monetary policy from political control — dating to the First and Second Banks of the United States — placed the Federal Reserve in a distinct category. The Court also indicated that the ruling likely does not extend to non-Article III courts such as the U.S. Tax Court. In a solo concurrence, Justice Neil Gorsuch signaled that the ruling is the beginning — not the end — of the Court’s work in this area, and called on the Court to continue restoring legislative and judicial powers to Congress and the courts.
The three dissenting justices, in an opinion authored by Justice Sotomayor and joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, argued that the majority’s ruling “undoes centuries of political practice” and disregards the principle of stare decisis, warning that chaos will follow from the Court’s decision to upend a structure that Congress and the executive branch had relied upon for more than 90 years.
Why the Decision Matters Beyond the FTC
Although the case involved the FTC, its reasoning extends well beyond consumer protection to reach a full range of independent federal agencies. Many of the federal agencies that employers interact with most frequently are led by commissioners or board members who have traditionally enjoyed fixed terms and statutory protection from at-will removal. Those protections now appear constitutionally vulnerable. The practical consequence is straightforward: presidents will likely have substantially greater authority to remove commissioners appointed by prior administrations and replace them with officials aligned with their own policy priorities. As a result, agency leadership — and therefore agency priorities — may shift far more quickly following presidential transitions.
What the Decision Means for the NLRB
Slaughter strongly indicates that the Court will find the NLRA’s removal provision — which permits removal of NLRB Members only for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office” — unconstitutional. Although the Court did not expressly address the NLRA, the decision appears to resolve the challenge filed by former NLRB Member Gwynne Wilcox after President Trump removed her in early 2025. As of the date of this article, former Member Wilcox’s challenge remains pending.
Former Member Wilcox may attempt to distinguish the NLRA’s removal protections from those struck down in Slaughter. The Court expressly reserved questions regarding “non-Article III courts” and adjudicatory bodies, and Wilcox could argue that the NLRB’s primarily adjudicatory function — deciding unfair labor practice complaints and conducting representation elections — places it closer to these reserved categories than to the FTC’s broad regulatory and enforcement apparatus. Additionally, the NLRB was created in the immediate wake of Humphrey’s Executor, with Congress expressly incorporating removal protections to ensure the NLRB’s “complete independence.”
These arguments, however, face significant legal hurdles. The Slaughter majority broadly held that when an agency “‘executes’ a congressional mandate against private parties, it exercises executive power — no ifs, ands, or quasis about it.” The NLRB — like the FTC — exercises enforcement, investigative, and adjudicatory powers against private parties, making it highly likely that Slaughter’s reasoning applies with full force to invalidate the NLRA’s for-cause removal provision. Moreover, many independent agencies, including the NLRB, were modeled on the FTC and relied on Humphrey’s Executor for their removal protections. With that decision now overruled, the legal foundation for those protections has been eliminated.
The implications for the NLRB may be especially significant. Unlike Cabinet agencies, the Board has historically been structured to promote continuity through staggered five-year terms and bipartisan membership requirements. That structure historically slowed dramatic policy shifts between administrations. However, over the last two decades — driven in part by the expanded role of the NLRB General Counsel’s Office and increasing political polarization — policy shifts at the NLRB from administration to administration have been substantial. Trump v. Slaughter materially weakens whatever institutional stability remains and grants presidents significantly greater authority to shape federal labor law.
If Slaughter is applied to authorize the at-will removal of sitting NLRB members, presidents will be able to reshape the Board almost immediately rather than waiting years for vacancies to occur. In addition, it remains unclear whether the provision in Section 3 of the NLRA requiring that no more than three Board members belong to the same political party also constitutes an unconstitutional restriction on the president’s authority over the agency. See 29 U.S.C. § 153(a).
What the Decision Means for the EEOC
The EEOC has traditionally operated as a bipartisan commission with staggered terms designed to ensure continuity across administrations. Although each agency presents unique statutory questions, Slaughter strongly suggests that removal protections for commissioners exercising executive authority face serious constitutional obstacles. Indeed, on July 6, 2026, former EEOC Commissioner Jocelyn Samuels voluntarily dismissed her lawsuit challenging her firing by the president, following Slaughter, stating that while she strongly disagreed with the Court’s decision in Slaughter, “The Court’s opinion … leaves [her] without a viable path forward to continue contesting [her] termination.”
For employers, this means enforcement priorities in areas such as discrimination, workplace investigations, and compliance may become increasingly tied to the political priorities of the sitting president, with widely varying interpretations from administration to administration on issues such as transgender protections, DEI, disability accommodations, and other equal employment rights issues.
Key Takeaways for Employers
Workforce Compliance and Enforcement Uncertainty
The removal protections that previously shielded independent agency officials were specifically designed to foster stability and insulate agencies from direct political pressure, along with staggered terms and requirements for partisan balance among members. With those protections eroded, independent agencies are now exposed to rapid leadership turnover from administration to administration. For employers, shifts in agency leadership at independent agencies can directly affect how workplace laws are interpreted, how regulatory guidance is issued, and how compliance expectations evolve. Employers should anticipate the possibility of more frequent and pronounced policy reversals at those agencies as administrations change, and factor that uncertainty into their compliance planning.
An Evolving Legal Landscape
The full scope of the Court’s ruling remains to be determined. The majority explicitly declined to define the outer limits of its holding, meaning courts will likely be called upon to address questions — including the status of agencies with more attenuated connections to executive power — in future litigation. Justice Gorsuch’s concurrence signals that the Court views further structural questions about delegation of legislative and judicial authority to independent agencies as ripe for reconsideration. In particular, employers should monitor Slaughter’s application to the NLRA’s removal protections. Applied to former Member Wilcox’s pending challenge, the decision could foreclose any prospect of delaying the current administration’s path to a three-Member Republican Board majority. More broadly, the era of gradual, staggered transitions in Board composition may be drawing to a close — replaced by the potential for immediate, wholesale change with each new administration. Employers across industries should monitor these developments closely.
Sheppard will continue to monitor developments and will provide updates on the Labor and Employment Law Blog as additional information becomes available.