In this episode, we walk through what Trump v. Slaughter actually held, why the Court's reasoning goes wider than its holding, and what happens next. We cover the "Decision of 1789" the majority uses as its historical anchor and Justice Sotomayor's response. We examine the stare decisis fight — seven prior Supreme Court cases had blessed the Humphrey's structure by name, including recent decisions the Court had just handed down. We explain the companion case, Trump v. Cook, decided the same morning, which saved the Federal Reserve on historical grounds while everyone else lost the same protection. And we get into the part the majority didn't quite say out loud: the opinion carefully carves out the Fed and Article I courts, but not administrative law judges. What that silence means for the MSPB, for ALJ tenure protection, and for every federal adjudication system in the country is the question the next Supreme Court term will start to answer.
Justice Gorsuch's concurrence lays out what he calls the "ratchet effect" — Congress delegated enormous power to agencies on the premise that those agencies would be independent, and that premise is now gone. What Congress thought it bargained for is not what Congress got. Justice Barrett's dissent in Cook asks how history can support both a categorical rule ending independence everywhere and a carveout preserving it at one institution. The Court, she notes, does not say.
Read the full explainer at remediespodcast.com/learn-trump-v-slaughter-explained.