Supreme Court dismantles regulatory independence, consolidating executive power over federal agencies
Original framing: “Supreme Court allows firing of FTC commissioners, ends agency independence” — The Verge
The decision reverses *Humphrey’s Executor v. United States* (1935), which established the FTC’s independence to prevent New Deal-era corporate capture. It echoes the Lochner era (1897–1937), when courts struck down labor and consumer protections to favor laissez-faire capitalism. The ruling accelerates a 40-year trend of judicial activism against regulatory agencies, from *Chevron* to *West Virginia v. EPA*.
The Supreme Court’s decision is not an isolated legal technicality but the culmination of a decades-long assault on the administrative state by corporate-aligned jurists and their allies in Silicon Valley.
By weaponizing the unitary executive theory, the Court dismantles a New Deal-era bulwark against monopolistic power, echoing the Lochner era’s judicial activism. This erosion of regulatory independence disproportionately harms marginalized communities, who rely on agencies like the FTC to curb racialized market exclusion and environmental racism. Indigenous governance models—where stewardship trumps executive fiat—offer a radical alternative to the Court’s extractive legalism. The path forward requires a multi-pronged strategy: legislative safeguards, community oversight, state-level resistance, and a cultural counteroffensive to reclaim the narrative of governance as a public good, not a corporate plaything.