In 2025, President Donald Trump sought to remove Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member Rebecca Kelly Slaughter without cause, challenging the statutory protections that limit presidential removal of FTC commissioners. The case raises fundamental questions about both the constitutionality of removal restrictions for federal officials and the scope of federal courts’ power to prevent such removals.
The Institute for Free Speech filed an amicus brief on behalf of Maud Maron, a former New York City education official who was removed from her elected position for expressing political views. The brief argues that “unless federal courts have the authority to grant comprehensive judicial relief, governments would be free to violate [Slaughter’s] rights and the rights of public officials like her, overriding the will of the voters who elected them precisely because of their political views.”
Supporting neither party in the case, the brief urges the Court to resolve this matter on the narrow administrative law question presented, arguing that “the scope of the federal courts’ powers to reinstate unlawfully removed public officers, both at law and at equity, presents ‘an important and complex question that would benefit from further percolation in the lower courts prior to this Court’s intervention.’”
The brief emphasizes that “The loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.” Without injunctive relief, officials facing unconstitutional removal would have no meaningful remedy, as “An award of back pay just before the end of his term would not have enabled [Georgia State Representative Julian] Bond, for instance, to vote on the various bills that came before the Georgia House during that session or to participate in the various legislative committee meetings that he had missed.”
To read the Institute’s Supreme Court amicus brief in Donald Trump, et al. v. Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, et al., click here.
