The United States Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case that addresses whether President Donald Trump may fire a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) despite congressional job protections for the post.

The high court announced its decision on Monday, effectively allowing Rebecca Slaughter to remain barred from her office at the consumer protection and antitrust agency while the case is ongoing.

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The court announced it will hear arguments in the case in December.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court granted an emergency stay that similarly upheld Trump’s ability to fire Slaughter, if temporarily.

The stay overturned a decision by Washington, DC-based US District Judge Loren AliKhan that had shielded the FTC commissioner from being dismissed before her term expired.

Chief Justice John Roberts on September 8 paused AliKhan’s order – allowing Trump to keep Slaughter out of her post – to give the court more time to consider the administration’s request concerning the judge’s order.

The dispute centres on the Republican president’s power to dismiss government agency heads covered by removal protections that Congress put in place to give certain agencies a degree of independence from presidential control.

Federal law permits a president to remove FTC commissioners only for cause – such as inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office – but not for policy differences. Similar protections cover officials at other independent agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.

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Slaughter was one of two Democratic commissioners whom Trump moved to fire in March. The firings drew sharp criticism from Democratic senators and antimonopoly groups concerned that the move was designed to eliminate opposition within the agency to big corporations.

In May, the Supreme Court allowed Trump’s dismissals at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) – despite the job protections for these posts – while litigation challenging those removals proceeded.

The court in that ruling said the US Constitution gives the president wide latitude to fire government officials who wield executive power on his behalf and the administration “is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power.”

Citing that rationale in July, the court also allowed Trump to remove three Democratic members of the US government’s top consumer product safety watchdog while a legal challenge to their removal proceeds.

The administration has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to allow implementation of Trump’s policies impeded by lower courts. The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has sided with the administration in almost every case that it has been called upon to review since Trump returned to the presidency in January.

Trump also has sought to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

Since the removal of Slaughter and her fellow Democratic commissioner in March, the FTC has operated for most of that time with three Republicans and no Democratic members.

The agency has pursued a conservative policy agenda in recent months, including holding a workshop on what it called the dangers of gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. The FTC warned Google that filtering Republican fundraising emails as spam could be unlawful and sought to investigate media watchdogs accused by billionaire Elon Musk of helping orchestrate advertiser boycotts of his social media platform X.