alt Hacker NewsFCC chair suggests agency isn't independent, word cut from mission statement
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Some context:
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5636278-trump-s...
It appears to be an open question as to if independent agencies are allowed under the constitution. The most recent round of articles seem to be like that one in The Hill, which indicate the answer is likely to be 'no'.
This seems to be in response to that.
The number of software engineers in this thread who think they are legal scholars is a sight to behold. It reminds me of all the bad legal advice on Stack Overflow, Quora, and Leddit.
If Humphrey's Executor goes down, "independent" becomes effectively unconstitutional under the current SCOTUS. It's awkward to have an unconstitutional goal hard wired into an agency's mission, and could be used against it in court. It's a bit of a presumption that Trump v Slaughter will turn out this way, but given the tone of the oral arguments, not a lot.
The way I read the US constitution, every federal government agency is necessarily contained in one of the three branches, since the entire federal government is made of and only of those three branches. FCC is not in the legislative branch -- constitution is clear that that is only the congress, it is not judicial -- the constitution is clear that those are the courts. So it is in the executive, which makes sense since its job is to enforce law -- the job of the executive branch. The executive branch reports directly to and is directly answerable to the head of the executive -- the president.
The congress cannot legislate a fourth branch even if they wanted to. They'd need a constitutional amendment for that. We have thus, by a simple application of reading and logic concluded that this is precisely as is expected given the US constitution.
If anyone ever wondered how third world democracies become corrupt, you don't have to wonder any longer. Just observe the current USA.
The shift is based on the argument that because the Communications Act of 1934 does not contain explicit for-cause removal protections for commissioners (unlike the laws creating the FTC, NRLB, FERC or others, which do), they are legally removable at will by the president, placing the agency under executive control.
The FCC has often been called an independent agency. But this may be a mistaken assumption. The 1935 Supreme Court ruling in Humphrey’s Executor held that when Congress included for-cause language, the president could not fire commissioners for simple policy disagreements. The FCC charter does not have that.
Under this interpretation, the FCC is considered part of the executive branch and aligned with the president's policy objectives rather than operating as an autonomous body