Several of President Donald Trump‘s firings of independent agency heads have made their way through the Supreme Court‘s emergency docket, but Tuesday’s ruling in a federal appeals court likely moves the justices closer to overturning a 90-year precedent on the issue.

A panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 Tuesday evening to deny the Trump administration’s effort to fire Democrat-appointed Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter pending appeal. The Supreme Court has already ruled in two separate orders on its emergency docket to allow the administration to fire independent agency heads while legal battles continue, but the high court’s long-standing precedent on the matter, stemming from its 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, complicates the latest case.

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In Humphrey’s Executor, the Supreme Court ruled that then-President Franklin Roosevelt could not fire an FTC commissioner at his discretion and could only fire him “for cause,” as outlined in the law passed by Congress authorizing the creation of the FTC. Tuesday’s majority ruling directly challenges the Supreme Court to overrule its precedent, citing its recent orders via the emergency docket.

“Humphrey’s Executor controls this case and binds this court. And recent developments on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket do not permit this court to do the Supreme Court’s job of reconsidering that precedent,” the majority opinion said.

Former federal prosecutor Bill Shipley believes the ruling tees up the Supreme Court to overrule the precedent and issue a ruling that aligns with the orders it has issued through the emergency docket.

“This is exactly as it should be. Humphrey’s Executor involved a member of the FTC. The Supreme Court said [the president] didn’t have authority to remove in that case,” Shipley said in a post on X. “Now [the Supreme Court] can take this very case up in the fall, and say ‘Humphrey’s is overturned’ — and reverse DC Circuit here.”

The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s authority to terminate independent agency heads in two rulings on its emergency docket, the first of which came in May. That first order dealt with the president’s firing of Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board.

“The stay reflects our judgment that the Government is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power. But we do not ultimately decide in this posture whether the NLRB or MSPB falls within such a recognized exception; that question is better left for resolution after full briefing and argument,” the unsigned May majority ruling from the high court said.

A July order from the Supreme Court, which allowed the firing of three Democrat-appointed members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, pointed to the May ruling that dealt with the NLRB and MSPB removals.

In her dissent to Tuesday’s ruling, D.C. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao argued that the appeals court should have granted a stay, citing the Supreme Court’s recent orders.

“The Commission unquestionably exercises significant executive power, and the other equities favor the government. These grounds were sufficient to support the Supreme Court’s judgment that a stay was warranted in two recent cases in which the district court ordered reinstatement of an officer removed by the President,” Rao wrote.

“Because we are required to exercise our equitable discretion in accordance with the Court’s directives, the district court’s order must be stayed. I respectfully dissent,” she added, citing the Supreme Court’s rationale from its unsigned May order.

The Justice Department will likely appeal the case to the Supreme Court, where the justices could pause the reinstatement of the FTC member on its emergency docket while letting the case continue to work its way through lower courts. The Supreme Court also has the option to take up the case for full merits arguments.

In the July order allowing the firing of the CPSC members, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he would have granted certiorari before judgment, meaning he would have taken up the case for full arguments now, rather than let it continue through the lower courts.

“Moreover, when the question is whether to narrow or overrule one of this Court’s precedents rather than how to resolve an open or disputed question of federal law, further percolation in the lower courts is not particularly useful because lower courts cannot alter or overrule this Court’s precedents,” Kavanaugh wrote. “In that situation, the downsides of delay in definitively resolving the status of the precedent sometimes tend to outweigh the benefits of further lower-court consideration.”

For the high court to accept a petition to hear full arguments, four of the nine justices must vote to grant certiorari.

As the Supreme Court increasingly shows frustration with the overreach of lower court judges, the justices could be motivated to take up cases more quickly on matters where lower courts are ignoring their emergency docket orders, such as with the firing of independent agency heads.

Carrie Severino, president of the conservative advocacy group Judicial Crisis Network, previously told the Washington Examiner that the justices have made recent orders more explicit and clear as lower court judges have ignored the Supreme Court’s previous orders on its emergency docket.

SUPREME COURT FRUSTRATED BY LOWER COURT OVERREACHES

“Some lower court judges have shown themselves to be unable to take a hint as to what the correct thing is. And so the justices are taking the extra step to be explicit and clear about where they’re going. I think the court is already taking further action just by spelling it out,” Severino said. “They can’t assume that these judges can read between the lines or can take a hint.”

A third petition on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket on the issue of independent agency head firings in a few months could convince more justices to take a case for full arguments, which could directly challenge the Humphrey’s Executor standard.