Trump v. Slaughter · ¶93

That supposed limiting principle is neither limiting nor much of a principle. On Slaughter’s view (and presumably the dissent’s), Congress could commandeer the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, most (if not at all) of the Department of Justice, and a number of other agencies besides. Indeed, it is not clear to us why Congress would need to allow the President any say in firings. If it is so “critical” for an agency “to have independence and to act with impartiality free from the suspicion of partisan direction,” Brief for Respondent 22 (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted), then why should the President have a role at all? Certainly those legislators who disagreed with the Decision of 1789 were happy to leave him out. See 1 Annals of Cong. 521 (Rep. Sedgwick) (arguing that…

slip opinion, revised 7/07/26
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