By Jody Godoy
(Reuters) -More than two dozen Democratic U.S. senators called on President Donald Trump on Wednesday to rescind his termination of the two Democratic members of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota sent the letter to the White House asking for the reinstatement of Democratic Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, whom Trump fired on Tuesday.
“This action contradicts long standing Supreme Court precedent, undermines Congress’s constitutional authority to create bipartisan, independent commissions, and upends more than 110 years of work at the FTC to protect consumers from deceptive practices and monopoly power,” the senators said in the letter.
Senators Richard Durbin of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and Maria Cantwell of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee, were among the 28 signatories.
Both Bedoya and Slaughter have said they plan to sue to reverse the firings.
The FTC enforces consumer protection and antitrust laws, and has a bipartisan structure in which no more than three of the five commissioners can come from the same party.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1935 upheld a law allowing the firing of FTC commissioners only for good cause, such as neglecting their duties.
The Trump administration has taken the position that the FTC is an executive branch agency, and its commissioners have been unconstitutionally shielded from being fired at will by the president.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy; Editing by Richard Chang)
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