The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to intervene in yet another legal battle over the president’s attempt to fire agency officials.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the high court that even after it issued emergency orders upholding the president’s firing on three other occasions, a lower court moved to reinstate Rebecca Slaughter, a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission.

President Trump moved in March to fire Ms. Slaughter and another Democratic member of the commission.

“In this case, the lower courts have once again ordered the reinstatement of a high-level officer wielding substantial executive authority whom the President has determined should not exercise any executive power, let alone significant rulemaking and enforcement powers,” Mr. Sauer wrote.

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court rejected President Trump’s move to fire her.

The majority upheld a lower court ruling that Ms. Slaughter’s ouster was illegal. They also overturned a stay that had been issued by a different panel of the appeals court, which had allowed Mr. Trump to block Ms. Slaughter from regaining her position while the case moved through the courts.

The decision was 2-1.

Previously, the high court has sided with Mr. Trump in his move to fire officials at the National Labor Relations Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Merit Systems Protection Board.

The case hits directly at an ongoing issue about how much fealty lower court judges should pay to Supreme Court rulings on the “emergency docket.” Those are cases that rush to the justices in a preliminary posture and are handled without full argument.

The Trump administration has produced a flurry of those rulings.

Some legal experts have said the emergency orders are not binding precedent for lower courts to abide by.

That’s particularly true in this case, where the 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor case specifically shielded an FTC commissioner from firing by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But some recent Supreme Court rulings have urged lower courts to pay attention to the emergency docket rulings, leaving confusion about how to handle cases like Ms. Slaughter’s firing.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.