One Supreme Court case preserves agency independence, the other erases it

The U.S. Supreme Court closed its 2025–2026 term with a pair of blockbuster decisions—Trump v. Cook and Trump v. Slaughter—issued the same day but pointing in sharply different directions. Together, they form a primer on how the current Court parses separation of powers, agency independence, and statutory removal protections. These two opinions show how similar facts can produce opposite outcomes depending on how the Court weighs history, structure, and statutory text. 

Legal framework for removal of agency officials 

Federal law has long recognized Congress’s ability to create offices with tenure protections—but only sometimes. The dividing line has always been fuzzy. 

The Supreme Court had previously held the president has at-will removal power over executive officers, but it carved out an exception for “quasi-legislative, quasi-judicial” agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). That exception had been narrowed over the years, but the tension still remains, as shown by the two recent cases. 

Is the Federal Reserve a different creature than the FTC?