Attorney General Bonta Joins Coalition Challenging Illegal Firing of FTC Commissioners

OAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today joined a coalition of 21 attorneys general in supporting two commissioners, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), who are challenging the illegal decision by President Trump to terminate them without cause from the Commission. In today’s amicus brief, the attorneys general highlight the importance of the FTC and assert that the two commissioners’ termination was illegal and violated longstanding Supreme Court precedent.

“A strong and independent FTC is not a partisan issue, it is an American imperative,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Not only is the President’s illegal firing of the two Commissioners extremely concerning, but it is also illegal. That’s why my fellow attorneys general and I are filing this amicus brief in support of the Commissioners’ reinstatement and to ensure the agency’s ability to fully operate, free from political influence.” 

For more than 100 years, the FTC has played an important role in consumer protection against scams and fraud, recovering billions of dollars for consumers harmed by unfair and deceptive practices. The agency has also been at the center of important antitrust cases that protect consumers from anticompetitive practices, many of which involved close partnerships with the states, such as the recent lawsuit to stop the merger between Kroger and Albertsons. It was intentionally designed by Congress to be an independent and bipartisan agency, with five commissioners with staggered seven-year terms.

Last month, President Trump dismissed the two remaining Democratic commissioners of the FTC. Alvaro Bedoya, appointed in 2022, was known for his expertise on digital privacy issues. Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, initially appointed in 2018 and reappointed in 2023, had been an advocate for robust consumer protection measures.

In the amicus brief, the attorneys general argue that the President violated the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits the removal of FTC commissioners except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The Supreme Court has affirmed the constitutionality of the Act’s removal protections in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. The removal of the two Commissioners dismantle the bipartisan structure of the agency’s leadership, which ruins the FTC’s independence by allowing the commission to become a partisan agency. This would allow the FTC to become an agency subject to the political whims of the president and unable to fully perform its function independently.

Attorney General Bonta joins the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, in filing this amicus brief.

A copy of the amicus brief can be found here.