Supreme Court Overrules Humphrey's Executor, Expanding Presidential Control Over Independent Agencies
The practical, real-world fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic 6–3 decision in Trump v. Slaughter (June 29, 2026) has begun to reshape the federal bureaucracy on a structural level. In a stark demonstration of consolidated executive power, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB)—the adjudicatory tribunal created by Congress in 1978 under the Civil Service Reform Act to protect career civil servants from political retaliation—has officially stopped describing itself as "independent."1
Internal communications and public-facing platforms viewed in July 2026 confirm that the MSPB has removed the word "independent" from its website’s "About" section, its official LinkedIn page, and all recent job announcements, including USAJobs postings for attorney-advisor positions. MSPB leadership has directed staff to refer to the board strictly as a "quasi-judicial agency" rather than "an independent, quasi-judicial agency."
The Slaughter decision, which held that statutory for-cause removal protections for Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commissioners are unconstitutional, effectively dismantled the 91-year-old precedent established in Humphrey’s Executor (1935). While the ruling specifically concerned the FTC, its legal logic applies directly to all other independent regulatory and adjudicatory agencies whose leaders were historically shielded from at-will presidential dismissal.
The MSPB’s voluntary concession of its institutional independence comes amid a series of sweeping overhauls. In June 2026, the White House officially converted MSPB attorney-advisors and supervisory attorney-advisors into the at-will civil service category known as Schedule Policy/Career (formerly Schedule F), stripping them of civil service protections and making them easier to fire. Furthermore, the board recently ruled that it lacks jurisdiction to intervene in agency firing decisions that cite constitutional authority, reversing an administrative judge’s initial ruling and upholding the terminations of two DOJ immigration judges.
Former career civil servants and legal experts have raised serious alarms over the MSPB's actions, warning that removing the institutional shield of independence will severely undermine career federal employees' confidence in the civil service appeals process.
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An instance of Administrative independence can be stripped away, but monetary and constitutional baselines remain protected. — The Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v. Slaughter immediately stripped a major adjudicatory board of its historical independent status. ↩︎