Joe is a good employee. Never late, always solid reviews, well-liked by the personnel office. Today his boss fired him. No reason given — just “we’re letting you go.” Joe’s stunned. Does he have any recourse?
In most of the country, and in Virginia, the answer is: not much. Joe is an “at-will” employee. His boss can fire him any day, for any reason, or for no reason at all — as long as it isn’t illegal discrimination. That’s how most Americans work, whether they realize it or not.
But some jobs come with a shield. By law, certain officials can only be fired “for cause” — meaning the boss has to point to real wrongdoing: inefficiency, neglect, misconduct. Not a whim. Not a policy disagreement. An actual reason.
Hold onto those two phrases — at will and for cause — because this past June, the Supreme Court decided which kind the powerful officials who run our federal government are. And the answer, plus one strange exception, tells you more about how your government works than a year of headlines.
The Supreme Court expanded the President’s control over the executive branch. That same day, it held one office beyond his reach — for now.
By Jeff Bayard | Constitutional Showdown Series
The Virginia Christian Alliance continues our Constitutional Showdown series, reading the text as written and testing every claim of power against it — so believers can practice faithful, clear-eyed citizenship.
On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court handed the President a major victory. It ruled that principal officers at independent agencies who exercise executive power — FTC commissioners and, by the same logic, members of bodies like the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Communications Commission — generally must be removable by the President at will, without needing a reason.
That same day, the same Court, in a second case, told him there was one official he could not fire at will: a governor of the Federal Reserve.
Same Chief Justice. Same day. Same question — how far does the President’s control over the executive branch reach? And two different answers.
That’s the puzzle worth sitting with. Not “did the President win” — he mostly did. The real question is where the Court drew the line, and why it drew it exactly there. Because the answer tells you something about how our whole system is built — and about the one place where the Court said history marks a boundary around the general rule.
Let’s take it in order.
First, the Rule Nobody Taught You
Here’s a question most Americans have never once considered: when the President “runs” the executive branch, who actually works for him, and can he fire them?
The Constitution’s answer starts with one sentence. Article II opens: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” One person. Not a committee, not a board — one.
The Framers chose that on purpose, and they chose it against the dominant post-Revolutionary trend. Americans had just fought free of a king, and many state constitutions responded by placing weak governors inside systems dominated by councils and legislatures. But those divided executives failed, and the Constitutional Convention reversed course. As Chief Justice Roberts recounted, James Wilson argued at the Convention that a single executive was “the best safeguard against” monarchy — because only one person in charge could be held responsible. A plural executive, Alexander Hamilton warned, “tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility.” With one President, Roberts wrote, there would be no doubt “on whom the blame . . . ought really to fall.”
But one person cannot run the whole government alone. So the President appoints officers to help him. And here’s the logic the Court leaned on: if those officers exercise the President’s power, they must answer to him — which means he must be able to remove them. Otherwise the chain breaks. James Madison, in the very first Congress, called it “the chain of dependence” — the lowest officers depending on the President, and the President depending on the people. Break a link, and no one can be held accountable to anyone.
That’s the framework. Now the case.
The Case: A Fired Commissioner
Rebecca Slaughter was an FTC commissioner serving a second term — first nominated by President Trump and confirmed in 2018, then renominated by President Biden in 2023 and confirmed again in 2024. Unlike Joe, she had exactly the shield we just described: by law, an FTC commissioner can be removed only “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” — for cause. Congress wrote that protection in 1914 to keep the agency independent.
In 2025, President Trump fired her anyway. He did not claim she was inefficient or neglectful. He told her plainly that her “continued service on the FTC [was] inconsistent with [his] Administration’s priorities,” and that he was acting under “Article II of the Constitution.” In other words, he treated her like an at-will employee — fired for a reason the statute doesn’t allow.
Slaughter sued to get her job back. She had a strong card: a 1935 Supreme Court decision, Humphrey’s Executor, had upheld exactly these for-cause protections for FTC commissioners for ninety years. The lower courts sided with her.
The Supreme Court did not. In Trump v. Slaughter, by a vote of 6 to 3, it held that the FTC’s removal protection violates the separation of powers — and it overruled Humphrey’s Executor. “The FTC unquestionably exercises executive power,” Roberts wrote, “and must therefore be controlled by the Chief Executive, in whom such power is vested.” Translation: a commissioner who wields the President’s power is, in the end, closer to an at-will employee than a for-cause one.
The Strongest Case for the Ruling
Set your politics aside and the majority’s argument is genuinely strong — and it’s an originalist argument, rooted in text and history, not partisanship.
The text vests all executive power in one President. The history backs it up: in 1789, the very first Congress debated exactly this question and concluded that removal is part of the executive power the Constitution gives the President — a conclusion so settled it became known as “the Decision of 1789.” Early Presidents of differing persuasions accepted that understanding, and the Court reaffirmed it in 1926 in Myers v. United States.
And the accountability logic is clean. If an official wields real government power over your business, your speech, or your wallet — and answers to no one you elected — then when that power is abused, whom do you hold responsible? The President says, “not under my control.” Congress says, “not ours to administer.” The buck stops nowhere. The majority’s point is that a President who cannot remove his own officers cannot be blamed for them either — and accountability requires that someone be blamable. As Roberts put it in closing: “Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.”
The Strongest Case Against It
Now the other side, at full strength — because it’s also serious, and it’s where an honest reader has to slow down.
The dissent, written by Justice Sotomayor and joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, argued from text, history, longstanding practice, and precedent. But its strongest practical ground was stare decisis — the principle that the Court should not casually discard its own long-settled precedent. For ninety years, Congress built the government in reliance on Humphrey’s Executor. Dozens of agencies — regulating workers, markets, consumer protection, and the airwaves — were structured around the promise that their leaders could not be fired at a President’s whim. Overturn that in a day, the dissent warned, and “chaos will follow.”
And there’s a deeper worry worth taking seriously. The dissent argued the ruling hands the President “a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted” — a pointed answer to the majority’s own founding story. If the whole reason for one accountable President was to prevent a king, does giving him total control over every regulator risk the very concentration of power the Founders feared? The majority likely has the better of the history — Roberts marshals the Decision of 1789 and two centuries of practice, and even Slaughter conceded key premises. But the dissent’s warning is not a slogan to wave off. This is a serious collision between two accounts of executive power, and a reader who takes the Constitution seriously should feel the weight of both before landing.
Which brings us to the strangest part of the day.
The One He Couldn’t Fire at Will
That same day, in Trump v. Cook, the Court considered whether the President could remove Lisa Cook, a governor of the Federal Reserve. And here — by a vote of 5 to 4 — it drew a line.
Be precise about what the Court did and didn’t say, because this is where careless summaries go wrong. The Court did not rule that the President can never remove a Fed governor. It ruled that a Fed governor keeps for-cause protection — she cannot be fired at will, for any reason or no reason — and that Cook had not been given the process the law requires. As the Court put it, whether a governor should be removed “is a decision only the President can make,” but “that does not mean that he may make that decision for any reason, or no reason.” He can still remove her for genuine cause. He just cannot fire her the way he fired the FTC commissioner.
Now look at who split how, because it upends the easy story. This was not conservatives-versus-liberals. In the Fed case, the Court’s three liberal justices joined Chief Justice Roberts to protect the Fed’s independence. Of the four dissenters, only Justice Thomas squarely argued that a Fed governor must be removable at will like any other executive officer — writing that in “the 237-year history of our Constitution,” the Court had never before blocked a President’s removal of an executive officer. Justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett dissented on narrower grounds — objecting mainly to how much the Court decided at this early, emergency stage — without joining Thomas’s constitutional conclusion. As Barrett put it, the issue “warrants much more than a few paragraphs.”
So the same nine justices, the same day, scattered. One group would preserve removal protections across the independent agencies. Thomas alone would extend the at-will rule to the Fed. Three others dissented on narrower grounds without adopting Thomas’s constitutional conclusion. And in the middle sat Roberts and Kavanaugh — the only two justices in the majority of both cases — expanding the President’s power over the FTC while preserving the Fed’s independence.
Why draw the line at the Fed? Roberts leaned on history: the Fed follows “a distinct historical tradition” of central banking reaching back to the First and Second Banks of the United States, and the Court would “not so quickly unsettle this ‘special arrangement sanctioned by history.'” The central bank, he wrote, need not be “trapped in amber” — but its independence was too deeply rooted to disturb.
Justice Kavanaugh added the practical concern openly. The Fed, he wrote, “occupies a unique role” and “maintains critical responsibility for the stability and success of the U.S. and world economies,” and he would “not risk destabilizing the U.S. economy” over the question. That practical worry sits alongside the historical rationale — not in place of it.
And here is the honest tension this piece won’t paper over. In Slaughter, the principle was clean: officers who wield executive power answer to the President. In Cook, that principle met a historically distinctive institution — and the real-world danger of shaking the global economy. The majority justified the Fed’s independence through history; the practical line also happened to protect the one institution whose disruption could rattle markets worldwide. Is that a genuine constitutional distinction, or pragmatism in a constitutional robe? Thomas said the latter, and the question is fair. But notice what both the majority and Kavanaugh insisted on: if the Fed’s protection is ever to be removed, “that change must occur through the legislative process.” Not by a President’s pen. Not by the courts. By Congress — the same lawful road this series keeps coming back to.
The Third Way
Here’s where the tribal reflexes both go wrong. One extreme cheers Slaughter as pure victory and waves off Cook as a nuisance — the President should be able to fire anyone, Fed included. The other treats Slaughter as the death of good government and clings to every agency protection as sacred. Both miss what actually happened.
The Third Way sees it plainly. The majority’s core principle is right: the Constitution vests “the executive Power” in one accountable President. Principal officers who exercise that power must answer to him, or accountability becomes a shell game. Scripture repeatedly affirms ordered responsibility: a steward answers to his master, and “it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2). The Founders likewise understood that power separated from responsibility invites abuse.
The Fed case does not necessarily abandon that principle. The majority said the Fed stands within a distinct historical tradition, while Kavanaugh warned openly about the danger of destabilizing the economy. Whether that is a genuine constitutional distinction or pragmatism dressed in constitutional language is a fair question. But the Court was clear about who may change the arrangement: Congress, through the legislative process — not a President acting by will alone.
Scripture also rejects the idea that a worthy end excuses an unlawful means: “And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully” (2 Timothy 2:5). The how matters as much as the what. A sound constitutional end must still be pursued through constitutional means.
So hold both. Accountability is a genuine constitutional good, reaffirmed in the office the Framers designed. And the Fed decision is a reminder that the line between a President’s control and an institution’s independence is drawn with attention to history — and, when it needs redrawing, belongs to Congress, not to any President’s pen.
What the Citizen Does
You don’t need a law degree to use what this case teaches. When you next read that a President “fired” some official, ask the question the whole case turns on: is that official a principal officer who wields the President’s executive power?
If yes — a commissioner who helps run an agency that writes and enforces rules against citizens — then under Slaughter the President generally must be able to remove that officer at will, whether you like the result or not, because someone accountable to you must be able to. If the official stands outside ordinary executive control — an Article III judge, for example — or serves in a historically distinctive institution such as the Federal Reserve, the answer may differ. Then the constitutional text, structure, and historical practice must do the sorting.
That single question cuts through most of the noise. It keeps you from cheering a power grab because it’s your side doing the grabbing, and from crying tyranny every time a President exercises power the Constitution actually gives him.
Because that’s the deeper lesson of a day when the Court both empowered the President and reined him in. Our system was built so that power would be accountable, not absent — vigorous enough to govern, checked enough to stay safe. “He changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings” (Daniel 2:21). Presidents come and go; the structure endures. Our task is to know it well enough that no officer of any party can bend it past what the text allows — and to hold every one of them, including the ones we voted for, to the words as written.
Read the text. Ask the honest question.
Go check.
