The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that President Trump cannot, for now, remove a government lawyer who leads a watchdog agency while the lawyer’s challenge to his firing moves forward. But the court’s brief, unsigned order indicated that it may soon return to the issue, noting that a trial judge’s temporary restraining order is set to expire next week.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that they would have rejected the Trump administration’s request for Supreme Court intervention outright. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., filed a dissent.

The majority, Justice Gorsuch wrote, presumably acted as it did because temporary restraining orders like the one in place in the case generally cannot be appealed — that is, he said, it “may not yet have ripened into an appealable order.”

“Respectfully,” he added, “I believe that it has and that each additional day where the order stands only serves to confirm the point.”

This is the first case arising from Mr. Trump’s broad use of executive power in his second term to reach the Supreme Court, and it comes as the president is seeking to remove thousands of federal employees, including some in roles long thought protected from summary dismissal.

The lawyer, Hampton Dellinger, has served as head of the Office of Special Counsel, which was created by Congress in 1978 to protect government whistle-blowers. It is unrelated to the special counsels appointed by the Justice Department.