In a major expansion of presidential authority, the Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for President Trump to fire independent government regulators despite federal laws meant to protect their jobs. But the justices separately carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve, and prevented the president from immediately removing Lisa D. Cook from the powerful central bank.
The court’s 6-to-3 ruling to broadly allow the firings, with the three liberal justices dissenting, represented a significant shift in power from Congress to the president and could usher in a drastic change to the federal government’s structure by giving the president more direct control over independent agencies.
The case specifically tested whether Mr. Trump could oust Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, simply because she does not align with his agenda and despite a law that says the president can remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
But the decision has implications for more than two dozen agencies — including those charged with protecting consumers, workers, the environment and nuclear safety — that have traditionally been insulated from complete presidential control by laws with similar protections.
In a separate decision, however, a divided court blocked the president from ousting Ms. Cook, saying she had not been given an opportunity to refute the administration’s unproven allegations of mortgage fraud, the rationale Mr. Trump had offered in attempting to fire her.
Former top Fed and Treasury officials and Ms. Cook’s legal team had warned the Supreme Court that allowing Mr. Trump to remove her while litigation was underway would spur economic turmoil and undermine the longstanding political independence of the central bank.
The F.T.C. case asked the justices to overrule a 90-year-old precedent in which the court had concluded such laws were constitutional. It has prevented presidents from removing independent regulators without cause and solely over policy disagreements.
A majority of the justices have long been sympathetic to the argument the Trump administration was making that the Constitution vests all executive power in the president and that he must be able to control everything the executive branch does. Even before Mr. Trump returned to the White House, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority had chipped away at Congress’s power to constrain a president’s authority to remove some independent regulators, finding some laws restricting the president from ousting independent officials without cause were unconstitutional.
Several justices had for years said that they were eager to overturn the 1935 precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, that has protected independent agencies. That case also involved the F.T.C.
