SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce to Step Down This Week
The Securities and Exchange Commission is allowed to conduct business, even though only two of its five seats will be filled.
Hester Peirce confirmed on September 25 that she will step down as a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 2. She posted on social media her resignation letter to President Donald Trump, dated September 21.
Peirce’s departure has been anticipated since May, when the Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia, confirmed that she would leave the commission in the fall to become an associate professor at the private, Christian university. Before joining the SEC, Peirce conducted research on the regulation of financial markets at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
In her resignation letter, Peirce called her time as an SEC commissioner “the honor of my professional lifetime” and wrote that the SEC will continue “maximizing people’s freedom … within sensible regulatory parameters.”
During her tenure as a commissioner, she was the designated head of the SEC’s cryptocurrency task force.
Peirce’s term, which began in January 2018, had initially expired in June 2025, but commissioners are allowed to serve for an additional 18 months following their term’s expiration. She previously served as counsel to SEC Chair Paul Atkins during his first term as SEC chair and had been a staff member in the SEC’s Division of Investment Management.
Once Peirce leaves, the SEC, designed to be led by a five-member, bipartisan panel of commissioners, will have only two commissioners: Atkins and Mark Uyeda, both Republicans, as is Peirce. The SEC adopted a rule in 1995 that allows the commission to conduct business even if it has fewer than three commissioners.
Under federal law, no more than three SEC commissioners may belong to the same political party, but the last two Democratic commissioners who resigned were not replaced by Trump. Jaime Lizárraga left the SEC in January 2025, and Caroline Crenshaw resigned in January 2026.
As of Monday afternoon, it was not known if Trump plans to fill any of the commission’s three vacant seats.
Several federal committees have had vacant seats or even lacked quorum during Trump’s second term, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, ERISA Advisory Council, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation Advisory Committee and Social Security Advisory Board.