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President Trump’s firing spree of independent agency leaders is running into a 90-year-old Supreme Court case that judges have used to block many of those ousters.
Now Mr. Trump’s allies are looking to the Supreme Court to overturn the case, or at least carve out new exceptions to justify the president’s house cleaning.
The case, known as Humphrey’s Executor, saw the high court in 1935 shoot down an attempt by President Franklin Roosevelt to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission over policy differences. The justices at the time ruled that the FTC performed legislative and quasi-judicial functions, so its leadership was immune from the president’s traditional power to control the executive branch.