Supreme Court: Law Somehow More Fake Than Ever Before - Balls and Strikes

[In It to Win It]

Balls and Strikes

The Supreme Court issued an order on Monday morning that allows President Donald Trump to remove Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission without cause, in direct violation of federal law and roughly a century of Supreme Court precedent. As with the Court’s other recent shadow docket orders overriding lower courts and upending existing law, Trump v. Slaughter does not explicitly say much—it’s literally only two sentences long. But the Court’s message is clear: The Trump administration is not bound by law, and lower court judges should stop acting as if it is.

The FTC is a federal agency created by Congress in 1914 to protect the public from unfair business practices. To safeguard the agency’s independence—and to keep its focus on the economic interests of the public, not just the president—Congress established that commissioners like Slaughter would serve seven-year terms, and could only be fired for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt fired FTC Commissioner William Humphrey anyway. Humphrey sued, and the White House argued that commissioners’ removal protections unconstitutionally interfered with the executive power of the president. The Supreme Court did not agree: In Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the Court unanimously upheld the tenure protections, and found it “plain under the Constitution that illimitable power of removal is not possessed by the President.”

In light of Humphrey’s Executor, Trump v. Slaughter should be a case of judicial déjà vu. Slaughter was fired without cause from her position as an FTC commissioner, like the plaintiff in Humphrey’s Executor. The president who fired her claimed that for-cause removal restrictions unconstitutionally interfered with his executive power, like the defendant in Humphrey’s Executor. So, each of the lower courts to consider the issue ruled against the president, like the Supreme Court in Humphrey’s Executor.

“Unless the Supreme Court expressly overrules Humphrey’s Executor, this court will not usurp the Supreme Court’s prerogative to overrule one of its own precedents,” wrote federal district court Judge Loren AliKhan in June. She concluded that the removal protections “remain constitutional, as they have for almost a century.”

[markodochartaigh]

1. Stare decisis, settled law

?feature=shared

The supremacist court: "We just make this shit up."

[MrWowWow]

2. Some Pigs Are More Equal Than Others!

Welcome to the "Animal Farm" Reality TeeVee Show!