Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

Rule Changes

Defendant, appealing district court ruling

The Hart-Scott-Rodino premerger notification form went largely unchanged for 48 years. When the Federal Trade Commission tripled its compliance burden in 2024, business groups sued—and a Texas federal judge just agreed with them.

Updated Feb 18

Rule Changes

Test case for whether presidents may fire independent commissioners at will

In 2025, President Donald Trump launched an aggressive campaign to assert sweeping authority over independent federal agencies, testing the long‑standing 1935 Supreme Court precedent in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that limited presidential power to fire members of multi‑member regulatory commissions. After the Supreme Court used its emergency docket to let Trump remove Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the conflict escalated when Trump fired Democratic Federal Trade Commission commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter in March 2025 and later attempted to oust Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, both before their fixed terms expired.

Updated Dec 11, 2025