Two Democratic former members of the Federal Trade Commission charged President Trump on Thursday for his decision to dismiss them from the agency and to accuse him of an illegal over -range of executive power.
Mr. Trump dismissed the Democratic Commissioners, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, on March 18, as a result of which the Consumer Protection Agency, which is usually run by three members of the president of the president and two of the counterparty.
In a lawsuit brought in the American court for the District of Columbia, lawyers for Mrs. Slaughter and Mr Bedoya claimed that Mr. Trump's resignation was for no reason and had violated the federal law. They mentioned a precedent from the Supreme Court of 1935 that said that the president cannot dismiss independent regulatory councils because of disagreements.
“In short, it is the foundation, binding precedent that a president cannot remove an FTC commissioner without reason,” said the court case. “The president's action is indefensible under the board.”
The White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, said earlier that “President Trump has the legal authority to manage staff within the executive.”
The lawsuit was the newest legal struggle for the attempts of Mr Trump to extend the power of the presidency. In recent months, more than 50 judicial judgments have in many cases temporarily stopped the actions of the administration, ranging from its aggressive attitude of deportations to the dismissal of civil servants.
The legal fights also have affected regulators who set up the congress to be independent of direct control of the White House. While supervisors are appointed by the president, many have traditionally had a large latitude to determine the direction of their agencies.
But Mr. Trump previously fired Gwynne Wilcox, a democrat in the National Labor Relations Board, who was restored this month by a federal court. The administration has appealed against that decision.
Mr. Trump also signed an executive order last month that the FTC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Labor Relations Board. The executive order has ordered those agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for assessment and to declare that, among other things, they must accept the interpretations of the President and the Ministry of Justice's law.
The lawsuit of Mrs. Slaughter and Mr Bedoya also mentioned the two Republican FTC commissioners – the chairman of the Agency, Andrew Ferguson and Melissa Holyoak – as defendants. They also called executive director of the agency, David B. Robbins.
The 1914 law that the FTC has established says that supervisory directors from the five -member council can be removed for “inefficiency, breach of duty or crime in office”. The Supreme Court strengthened that protection in the 1930s when President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to dismiss a member of the FTC
In a letter that was sent on behalf of Mr Trump last week in which he informs one of the commissioners of the termination, the White House said that the protection of the Supreme Court's pronunciation did not apply to those who led the FTC today.
Mr. Ferguson said last week in a statement that he “had no doubt” about the president's constitutional authority to remove his colleagues. The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comments on the court case.
In the lawsuit, lawyers said for Mrs. Slaughter and Mr Bedoya that the two “access to their offices have been refused” and now mentioned as former members of the committee on the FTC website. Their staff is also placed on administration leave according to the court case.
The FTC has been responsible for some of the greatest confrontations between the American business community and the federal government. In April the agency is planned against Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and other apps, during an antitrust -testing about whether the tech giant illegally oppressed the budding competitors when the Instagram and WhatsApp bought.
The FTC has also brought lawsuits against Amazon, with the argument that it has made it difficult for consumers to cancel its Prime Subscription Service and small traders who use the site.
Under Mr. Ferguson, the agency has increasingly focused on the power of the large online platforms about speech and discourse. Last month the agency started asking for comments from people and companies that said their messages were incorrectly deleted by social media sites.
