Trump v. Slaughter · ¶61

Soon enough, we recognized that Humphrey’s flunked even its own test. “[I]t is hard to dispute that the powers of the FTC,” even “at the time of Humphrey’s Executor,” we explained in 1988, “would at the present time be considered ‘executive,’ at least to some degree.” Morrison v. Olson, 487 U. S. 654, 690, n. 28. Not one for understatement, Justice Scalia observed in dissent that the Court had “swept” Humphrey’s “into the dustbin of repudiated constitutional principles.” 487 U. S., at 725. The Court put the matter more delicately, but no less definitively. “We undoubtedly did rely on the terms ‘quasi-legislative’ and ‘quasi-judicial’” in Humphrey’s, the Court noted, “but our present considered view is that” the constitutional question “cannot be made to turn on” such “rigid categories,” at least for inferior officers. 487 U. S., at 689. Contra, post, at 7 (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting)…

slip opinion, revised 7/07/26
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