Humphrey's Executor V. United States

''Humphrey's Executor v. United States'', 295 U.S. 602 (1935), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that ruled that the U.S. Constitution allows the U.S. Congress to enact laws limiting the ability of the President of the United States to fire the executive officials of an independent agency that is quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial in nature.

The case involved William E. Humphrey, a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt had fired in 1933. Roosevelt had fired Humphrey over their policy disagreements involving economic regulation and the New Deal, even though the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 prohibited firing an FTC commissioner for any reason other than "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."

Background

Humphrey had served as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission since 1925, having been appointed by President Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge's successor, President Herbert Hoover, appointed Humphrey to a second seven-year term in 1931. Humphrey was an outspoken and controversial FTC commissioner. He believed the FTC was oppressively burdening American economic enterprise, and he stridently opposed most of the agency's enforcement actions against businesses and corporations.

When Roosevelt became President in 1933, he was dissatisfied with Humphrey and viewed him as inadequately supportive of the New Deal. Roosevelt twice wrote to Humphrey asking him to resign because his policies did not align with his own, but Humphrey refused.

In October 1933, Roosevelt wrote Humphrey a third letter that simply fired him. Nevertheless, Humphrey continued to come to work at the FTC even after he was formally fired. The Federal Trade Commission Act permitted the President to dismiss an FTC member only for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." Roosevelt's decision to dismiss Humphrey was based solely on political differences, rather than job performance or alleged acts of malfeasance..

Five months after his firing, on February 14, 1934, Humphrey died of a stroke at age 71. After his firing, the FTC had stopped paying Humphrey his salary of $10,000 per year (). Samuel Rathbun, the executor of Humphrey's estate, sued the U.S. federal government in the United States Court of Claims. Rathbun claimed that Humphrey's firing had been unlawful and that the federal government therefore owed Humphrey's estate five months of back pay for the period of time between his firing and his death. During the course of adjudicating the lawsuit, the Court of Claims issued two certified questions to the U.S. Supreme Court:
# "Do the provisions of section 1 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, stating that 'any commissioner may be removed by the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office', restrict or limit the power of the President to remove a commissioner except upon one or more of the causes named?"
# "If the foregoing question is answered in the affirmative, then—If the power of the President to remove a commissioner is restricted or limited as shown by the foregoing interrogatory and the answer made thereto, is such a restriction or limitation valid under the Constitution of the United States?"

These certified questions were the basis for the Supreme Court's decision.

Decision

On May 27, 1935, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9–0 decision in favor of Rathbun and Humphrey's estate, holding that the removal restrictions in the FTC Act did not violate the Constitution.

In an opinion written by justice George Sutherland, the Court distinguished between executive officers and quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial officers. The Court held that the latter may be removed only with procedures consistent with statutory conditions enacted by Congress, but the former serve at the pleasure of the President and may be removed at his discretion. The Court ruled that the Federal Trade Commission was a quasi-judicial body because it adjudicated cases and promulgated rules. Thus, the President could not fire a member solely for political reasons. Therefore, Humphrey's firing was improper.

During its analysis, the Court distinguished '' Myers v. United States'' and rejected its dicta that the President has unencumbered removal powers.

Developments during the second Trump administration

Overturning of ''Humphrey's Executor'' was seen as a key point in Project 2025, a framework which rivals the agenda of Trump's second administration, and lawyers from the Department of Justice defending these firings in these lawsuits have claimed in court filings that ''Humphrey's Executor'' is unconstitional.

On May 22, 2025, in a 6-3 unsigned order in response to an emergency appeal from Trump, the Supreme Court stayed the reinstatement of two independent regulators, Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and chair Cathy A. Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board, pending further review in lower courts. The unsigned order stated that "because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents." However, the Court did not rule on the merits, with the order stating "The stay reflects our judgment that the Government is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power. But we do not ultimately decide in this posture whether the NLRB or MSPB falls within such a recognized exception; that question is better left for resolution after full briefing and argument."

The decision was sharply criticized by Justice Elena Kagan in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, saying that the ruling had effectively repealed ''Humphrey's Executor'' "by fiat", and that "nowhere is short-circuiting our deliberative process less appropriate than when the ruling requested would disrespect—by either overturning or narrowing—one of this Court's longstanding precedents". Kagan also criticized the order's call-out to separate the Federal Reserve Board from other independent agencies, saying that this board's independence "rests on the same constitutional and analytic foundations as that of the NLRB, MSPB, FTC, FCC, and so on — which is to say it rests largely on ''Humphrey's''."

See also

* The Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution
* Tenure of Office Act (1867)
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* '' Wiener v. United States'', 357 U.S. 349 (1958)
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* '' Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau'', 591 U.S. 197 (2020)
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* List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 295
* Lawsuits over removals of independent agency heads during the second Trump presidency

References

Works cited

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Humphrey's Executor v. United States
United States separation of powers case law
1935 in United States case law
United States Supreme Court cases
United States Supreme Court cases of the Hughes Court
United States administrative case law
Appointments Clause case law
Constitutional challenges to the New Deal