A Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission who refused to accept his March firing by President Donald Trump has resigned his post.
Alvaro Bedoya submitted a letter to the White House Monday saying he is immediately stepping down — a move that comes months after Trump fired him and fellow Democratic Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.
Bedoya and Slaughter were part of an unprecedented wave of firings across federal agencies in which Trump has specifically targeted Democratic members of independent commissions.
Bedoya and Slaughter both sued to overturn their March dismissal in federal court, arguing the president fired them for political reasons, a case Bedoya said he will continue to pursue.
“While being an FTC commissioner is a dream job, my number one job is to take care of my family,” Bedoya told POLITICO last week in an exclusive interview. “We’ve been abiding by the ethical restriction that we understand to apply to commissioners, so I haven’t taken another job, I haven’t accepted outside income.”
He said he’s leaving not to abandon the fight, but to be legally able to take another job.
Since the firing, Bedoya and Slaughter have used their public platform to issue dissenting opinions through social media posts, as well as the FTC’s public comments portal, while waiting on a judge to rule in their case. Those symbolic opinions are meant to criticize Republican opinions written without Democratic input.
The two Democrats have also continued to label themselves as commissioners when making public appearances. Bedoya appeared at the Iowa Farmers Union over the weekend, where he was listed as a sitting commissioner and spoke about antitrust and unfair pricing concerns within the agriculture industry.
Bedoya and Slaughter’s lawsuit against the Trump administration argues they were illegally fired for political reasons, and asks that they be allowed to continue their roles as FTC commissioners.
Bedoya dropped the latter request in a court filing on Monday after submitting his resignation, and is only asking the judge to find that his termination was illegal.
The White House has argued that the president has the authority to fire independent regulators at agencies like the FTC.
Two Biden appointees challenging their firings at the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board suffered a setback last month when the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to fire them.
In a rare move though, the justices sought to allay fears that allowing Trump to remove the labor officials would clear the way for the president to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board. The court said that’s a separate issue and suggested that it might not uphold an attempt to fire the Fed chair.
Bedoya declined to share what his next job will be. He said he will continue to meet with labor unions and business leaders, and publish unofficial dissenting opinions to FTC decisions.
