Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the Supreme Court of giving President Donald Trump “power unknown even to the English Crown.”
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The 6-3 ruling Monday in Trump v. Slaughter wiped out a 91-year-old precedent that let Congress protect the heads of independent federal agencies from being fired at will.
“In holding otherwise,” Sotomayor , joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, “the Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”
“Perhaps worst of all, the Court today forgets its place,” she continued. “Today’s majority, however, decides that it knows better: better than even Hamilton, Story, Webster, Holmes, Brandeis, Frankfurter, and Rehnquist.”
“Today, the majority replaces 90 years of proven, workable practice with a half-baked theory of executive power that is simultaneously all encompassing yet also subject to necessary but undefined exceptions,” she wrote. “The one thing that does appear to be clear going forward is that chaos will follow.”
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The ruling guts the independence of more than two dozen federal agencies — including the bodies that police Wall Street, protect workers, and regulate airwaves. Trump can now fire their leaders for any reason, or no reason at all.
“In granting the President this unbridled authority, the Court upends its precedent, misconstrues our history, and sheds any pretense of judicial modesty,” Sotomayor wrote, calling the decision “egregiously wrong.”
The court issued a separate 5-4 ruling the same day, preserving the Federal Reserve’s independence, for now.
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