The scope of the President’s removal power has been a subject of much interest during the 119th Congress as President Donald Trump has dismissed several officials from independent regulatory commissions. These officials have typically been viewed as insulated from removal by for-cause tenure protections—statutory provisions typically providing that officials may be removed by the President before the expiration of their fixed term only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. The Trump Administration contends that the applicable statutory protections infringe on the President’s constitutional authority under Article II to remove executive officials. Under the Administration’s view, the 1935 decision of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), which upheld the use of for-cause removal protections in certain scenarios, either does not apply to modern independent agencies or, if it does, must be overruled. These firings have resulted in significant litigation, including one case, Trump v. Slaughter, that is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. No. 25-332 (U.S. 2025). In Slaughter, the Supreme Court has been asked to consider this constitutional dispute over statutory removal protections. The U.S. Constitution is silent on the removal of executive officers other than through impeachment. As a result, history, tradition, and early understandings of the separation of powers have played a central role in delineating the extent to which Congress can use its legislative authority to protect executive branch officials from removal by the President. The seminal case of Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), is representative in that it relied heavily on the views of the Framers and the Members of the First Congress in striking down a law that required Senate consent to remove a postmaster general. Although most of the Court’s subsequent removal cases have discussed sources of Founding-era history, there remains significant ambiguity as to both (1) how the Framers viewed the scope of the President’s constitutional authority to remove officials at or near the time the Constitution was ratified and (2) what the First Congress determined during its debates on removal in 1789. In light of the likelihood that Slaughter will grapple with this ongoing historical and interpretive debate, this report highlights some of the available Founding-era perspectives by discussing deliberative debates of the period, which occurred at the Constitutional Convention, in the Federalist Papers, and during the First Congress. These debates may inform the disputed junction between the President’s power to remove leaders of executive agencies and Congress’s power to protect those officials from dismissal through statute. Ultimately, these debates reflect a number of interpretive positions on removal, meaning these early sources may not be dispositive or yield sufficiently clear answers to the questions at issue in Slaughter and other cases.
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