Supreme Court term weakens Congress and expands Trump power

Supreme Court Addresses Executive Authority and Limits on Independent Agencies

The Supreme Court completed its term with several decisions examining the scope of presidential power over executive agencies, campaign finance rules, voting statutes, and appropriations. The rulings addressed long-standing questions about the structure of federal agencies and the separation of powers.

These cases involved disputes over whether Congress can create agencies whose leaders are insulated from direct presidential removal. After the term, the court held that the president retains authority to oversee officials who enforce federal law in several contexts. Congress no longer maintains certain prior mechanisms for insulating regulators or directing state officials in specific funding disputes.

For decades, legal scholars have debated whether the Constitution's vesting of executive power in a single president permits Congress to establish independent commissions whose members cannot be removed at will. The unitary executive theory, advanced in academic writings since the 1980s, maintains that all enforcement of federal statutes falls under presidential supervision. The court applied this view in multiple rulings during the term.

In one decision involving the Federal Trade Commission, the justices addressed provisions that had limited presidential removal of commissioners. The ruling retained the agency's statutory powers while eliminating the for-cause removal restriction that had protected commissioners since the New Deal era. Legal historian Jed Shugerman of Boston University described the approach as selectively preserving statutory elements. The decision overturned the 1935 precedent in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, which had upheld limits on removal for certain independent agencies after extended academic discussion of original constitutional meaning.

The court also interpreted the Voting Rights Act in a manner that raised the evidentiary threshold for claims alleging dilution of minority voting strength in district maps. It invalidated federal restrictions on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates, reversing a 2001 holding. In a case brought by a Rastafarian inmate, the justices limited Congress's ability to authorize damages suits against state officials for violations of federal conditions attached to funding programs.

Regarding appropriations, the court permitted the president to continue withholding approximately $4 billion in foreign aid funds appropriated by Congress pending further proceedings. Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck noted that several orders originated from the court's shadow docket, where cases receive abbreviated review without full briefing or oral argument.

The president did not prevail in every matter. Chief Justice John Roberts authored opinions in three cases that rejected administration positions, including challenges to emergency tariffs, an attempt to remove a Federal Reserve governor, and an order concerning birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. In the citizenship case, four justices indicated willingness to reconsider the scope of birthright citizenship, a position that had received limited judicial support in prior decades.

Analyses of the term's methodology differed. Shugerman observed that the court invoked originalist reasoning to end agency independence in one instance while recognizing an exception for the Federal Reserve on the same day, a distinction rejected by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett. Vladeck stated that the justices applied historical and textual arguments inconsistently across cases involving race and executive action.

The term produced six-to-three divisions in several high-profile matters. Observers across perspectives have noted that these rulings continue a pattern, visible in prior terms, of narrowing congressional authority relative to the executive branch and the judiciary in areas such as agency structure and enforcement discretion.