Former Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter delivered the 2026 Florrie Wilkes Sanders Lecture in late March. Part of the Dean’s Lecture Series, the talk was co-hosted by the Vanderbilt Law Office of Culture & Community; The Women, Law and Policy Program; Program in Law and Government; George Barrett Social Justice Program; and Women Law Students’ Association.
In her talk, titled “For Cause: On Being an Inconvenient Woman at an Independent Agency,” Slaughter focused on her personal story of being a professional woman in public service and a named plaintiff in a suit against the federal government. She also discussed the importance of agency independence and why, as a result, she decided to sue the Trump administration in Slaughter v. Trump.
She began by recounting the day she found out that she was fired without cause by the Trump administration. March 17, 2025, was a day she was looking forward to because she had her afternoon blocked off to help with her daughter’s drama club performance, where she found out via email that she — as well as the other Democratic Commissioner at the FTC — had been fired.
“I opened my email knowing that this was not likely to be good news and found an email from someone in the Presidential personnel office that was very long but basically said, ‘You’re fired,’” Slaughter said. “It said specifically something like, your continued service at the FTC is incompatible with President Trump’s priorities, so you’re removed, effective immediately.”
In that moment, Slaughter recalled wondering how exactly she had arrived in her current situation.
She went on to recount her journey to the FTC. “My alternative career paths [were either] being a preschool teacher or being a professional stage manager, because I really liked the behind-the-scenes, operational orchestration of things,” Slaughter said. “But I also really loved the law and public policy, so I went to law school thinking I wanted to work in public policy, and I ended up working in the Senate.”
After working in the Senate, Slaughter worked briefly at a law firm before returning to politics as counsel in the office of Senator Chuck Schumer. In Sen. Schumer’s office, she worked her way up to Chief Counsel and found a love for antitrust law, intellectual property, consumer protection and tech policy.
“The issues themselves didn’t necessarily lend themselves to sort of dramatic partisan fights, and I found that really interesting,” Slaughter said. “I also thought [that] these are issues that really matter to people in their everyday lives, even if they’re not as headline-grabbing as some of the sort of high-profile hot-button issues.”
After learning that she would be expecting her third child, Slaughter felt as if she needed a change of pace from the Senate. Conveniently, the Democrats were looking for a candidate for FTC commissioner in 2018 — one who would be acceptable to the Democratic Caucus and to President Trump. Slaughter fit the bill, and just nine days after giving birth to her third child, she had her confirmation hearing to become the commissioner of the FTC.
“I knew enough about the politics of nominations and confirmations to know that if I didn’t go in on that package, it was going to be a very long time [before I would get to go in again], and I figured I’d rather do the confirmation hearing nine days postpartum than not do it,” Slaughter explained.
Slaughter started as a minority commissioner at the FTC, where she had to navigate a 24/7 job while having her fourth child. At the beginning of the Biden administration, she served as the acting chair. When Lina Khan was confirmed as the chair of the agency, Slaughter moved to a majority commissioner role. When her first term expired in late 2022, she was renominated for another term by President Biden and confirmed unanimously.
“I really grew over time to love the agency, appreciate the structure of the agency, [and] care deeply about the work of the agency,” Slaughter said.
While the firing was shocking, it wasn’t a surprise to her, but she believed the dismissal was done illegally.
“The language of the FTC is very clear that a Commissioner can only be removed for neglect, inefficiency, or malfeasance in office, so collectively for cause,” Slaughter said. “The statute was passed in 1914 [and] was challenged by President Roosevelt and unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court in 1935 as a constitutionally valid structure of an agency and has been replicated in about two dozen other agencies.”
The first thing Slaughter did after learning the news was issue a statement pushing back on the President’s decision to remove Democratic Commissioners. She eventually sued the Trump administration over the removal, citing it as a violation of the United States Constitution’s Article II.
“I think [this case] matters both in principle and in practice,” Slaughter said. “The principles that I care very much about are, first, the rule of law and standing up for it. If the President disagrees with this idea of for cause, removal protections at independent agencies, there is a way to fix that [which] is set forth in the Constitution.”
She stressed how the federal agencies are independent precisely because Congress structured them that way. Secondly, she also knew that she was uniquely able to go through such a challenge, vis-à-vis other challenges that people might be going through that would prevent them from doing so.
During this time, Slaughter has had to remain unemployed to retain standing for the suit, a situation that she noted was possible because her husband has a reliable private sector job.
Slaughter was reinstated by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, a decision that was temporarily stayed and then subsequently upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Supreme Court temporarily stayed that decision before hearing her case on December 8, 2025, the outcome of which remains undecided.
She concluded by emphasizing the one consideration that has comforted her throughout this winding process: no matter the decision, the discussion will likely continue.
“Fighting for the rule of law, for checks and balances, and for a government that is accountable to the people of the United States and not to the oligarchy is something that is not going to stop being important to me, whatever happens in this case,” Slaughter said.
Watch the entire lecture below or on our YouTube Channel: