Trump v. Slaughter and the end of independent agencies

To add even more uncertainty to the fraught landscape of energy planning and regulation, the end of the Supreme Court opinion season last month brought a highly controversial ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, where the court held that the president can fire commissioners at independent agencies without cause. While some argue that this is an appropriate tightening of elected authority over independent bureaucracy, a less-hopeful view (articulated by Robinson Meyer in Heatmap last week) is that the ruling represents a continuing erosion of Congressional authority – in this case, powers intentionally delegated to independent technical experts – relative to the executive branch. While we’re unlikely to see major short-term policy changes on the energy front – the current FERC and NRC are already closely aligned with the goals of the current administration – over the long term, this could reshape policy at FERC and NRC in ways that are hard to predict. Robinson Meyer takes the strong view here, arguing that Slaughter essentially turns the commissions into agencies – implementers of the president’s agenda, rather than independent arbiters (Ben Schifman of IFP has an interesting take in the same thread arguing that ratemaking bodies like FERC will remain exempt - time will tell if SCOTUS will re-litigate that argument).