The Supreme Court Is Set to Pick Financial Predators Over the People

Other agencies are structured to be more independent. The Federal Trade Commission, the agency at issue in this case, enforces federal antitrust law and some consumer protection laws, with a mandate to prevent fraudulent, anticompetitive, and deceptive business practices. To ensure that the FTC operated in the interests of good government, Congress placed it under the direction of a board of Senate-confirmed commissioners and insulated them from unjustified removal by the president.

This has generally been a good thing for the American people. Agencies like the FTC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and so on have existed for roughly a century now—a century when Americans enjoyed unprecedented growth in prosperity, quality of life, and individual liberty. This is not to say that these agencies were responsible for twentieth-century America’s success, of course. But they certainly didn’t seem to prevent or inhibit it.

The conservative legal movement—and, more importantly, the six justices it installed on the Supreme Court—takes a much different view. They favor the “unitary executive theory,” whereby presidents should be able to wield absolute control over every aspect of the executive branch. Then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote in an opinion in PHH Corp v. CFPB in 2018, while serving on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he aptly summarized the conservative view.