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President Trump is once again asking the Supreme Court to expand his power as the justices on Monday consider whether he can fire independent government officials insulated by laws meant to shield them from politics.

The case involves Mr. Trump’s firing of a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission and a landmark decision from 1935, which said that Congress could put limits on the president’s authority to remove some executive branch officials.

Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has fired government watchdogs, leaders of independent agencies and rank-and-file federal workers, drawing multiple legal challenges.

The Supreme Court has generally allowed the firings to take effect through temporary emergency orders. This case is the first opportunity for the court to issue a conclusive ruling on the underlying legal questions of Mr. Trump’s firings.

Here’s what else to know:

Recent rulings: The court’s conservative majority has been receptive to Mr. Trump’s claims that a president should not be forced to delegate authority to agency heads at odds with his agenda.

Broad effects: More than two dozen agencies beyond the Federal Trade Commission could be affected by a ruling in Mr. Trump’s favor.

The F.T.C.: The agency protects consumers from deceptive practices and monopoly power. It is led by five commissioners who serve staggered seven-year terms. The commissioner who brought the case, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, was fired in March.

Executive power: The justices this term are considering a number of cases testing presidential power, including on Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, his effort to end birthright citizenship and whether he can fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board.

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Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democrat who has served on the Federal Trade Commission, at a hearing on Capitol Hill in 2019.Credit...Susan Walsh/Associated Press

Under federal law, President Trump is free to fire Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a member of the Federal Trade Commission. But he has to provide a reason. Congress has defined sufficient cause to fire a member of the F.T.C. as “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

Mr. Trump says the separation of powers guaranteed by the Constitution forbids Congress to limit his ability to run the executive branch. For that reason, he insists that he can fire Ms. Slaughter and other leaders of independent agencies for any reason — or for no reason at all. Congressional efforts to shield officials from political interference by curbing his ability to fire regulators, he argues, are unconstitutional.

The case the Supreme Court hears Monday will test that proposition.

But how hard would it be for Mr. Trump to simply comply with statutes requiring him to give a reason before firing regulators? The legal terrain is surprisingly uncharted because attempts to remove leaders of independent agencies “for cause” are exceedingly rare.

Federal laws requiring presidents to show cause are, on the other hand, commonplace. More than 30 statutes say that leaders of executive agencies can be removed only for some combination of the same factors cited in the law shielding F.T.C. commissioners like Ms. Slaughter. Another 20 or so, like the one governing the Federal Reserve Board, say only that agency leaders may be removed “for cause,” without elaboration.

The difference may matter. Writing in The Columbia Law Review in 2021, Lev Menand and Jane Manners said that “cause” included not just “inefficiency, neglect of duty and malfeasance” but also a broader category of misdeed that included “immorality, ineligibility, offenses involving moral turpitude and conviction of a crime.”

That means, they wrote, that “the president’s power to remove Federal Reserve governors is greater than it is over many other independent agency heads.”

Similarly, a 2013 article in The Cornell Law Review by Kirti Datla and Richard L. Revesz concluded that the differences between the two standards might be meaningful, and that statutes that allowed appointees to be removed for cause conferred “the weakest protection” from presidential intervention.

That difference will probably not figure in Ms. Slaughter’s case, in which Mr. Trump has offered no reason for her removal. But it may matter in a case to be argued next month, one concerning whether he can fire Lisa Cook, a Fed governor.

That case will not only test whether the Federal Reserve gets special legal protections that other quasi-independent boards and commissions do not, as several of the justices have suggested. It will also deal more directly with what constitutes an adequate reason for a presidential firing. In that case, Mr. Trump has said he has sufficient cause to dismiss Ms. Cook — an accusation of mortgage fraud. She has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing.

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Who is Rebecca Slaughter?

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Rebecca Slaughter at her home in Maryland last week. Credit...Moriah Ratner for The New York Times

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the plaintiff in the lawsuit being considered by the Supreme Court on Monday, spent almost seven years on the Federal Trade Commission before she was removed by President Trump in March.

Ms. Slaughter, a Democrat, was appointed to the commission by Mr. Trump during his first term in 2018. She had previously served as an aide to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader.

Ms. Slaughter briefly became the F.T.C.’s acting chair after former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took office in 2021. During her time in the top job, the agency brought a lawsuit challenging a biotech company’s purchase of a start-up that developed tests to detect cancer.

The case against the company, which tested whether antitrust laws could be applied to nascent parts of the economy, resulted in a long legal battle. It ended with a legal victory for the F.T.C., and the biotech company agreed to divest the start-up in 2023.

Mr. Trump removed Ms. Slaughter from her post in March alongside a second Democrat on the commission, Alvaro Bedoya. The pair sued to challenge their dismissal.

Mr. Bedoya resigned from the agency in June, citing his inability to forfeit an income while the case moved forward. In July, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed his claims as a result.

The Supreme Court will hear a major test of Trump’s power to fire officials.

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Rebecca Slaughter sued President Trump after he fired her from the Federal Trade Commission in March. Credit...Moriah Ratner for The New York Times

The Supreme Court on Monday will consider whether President Trump can fire independent government officials despite laws meant to protect them from politics, a major test for the justices to determine how far to expand presidential power.

The justices are being asked to overturn a landmark decision from 1935, which said that Congress could put limits on the president’s authority to remove some executive branch officials.

In recent rulings, the court’s conservative majority signaled that it was receptive to Mr. Trump’s claims that a president should not be forced to delegate authority to agency heads at odds with his agenda.

A decision in the president’s favor would call into question the constitutionality of job protections extended to more than two dozen other agencies Congress has charged with protecting consumers, workers and the environment — and potentially upend the fundamental structure of the modern government.

Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has fired government watchdogs, leaders of independent agencies and rank-and-file federal workers, drawing multiple legal challenges.

The Supreme Court has generally allowed the firings to take effect through temporary emergency orders. Monday’s case, involving the Federal Trade Commission, presents the first opportunity for the court to issue a conclusive ruling on the underlying legal questions of Mr. Trump’s firings.

Next month, the justices will separately consider whether the president has the power to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve Board governor. The justices have allowed Ms. Cook to remain in her post for now, signaling that the central bank may be uniquely insulated from presidential interference because of its history.

At issue on Monday is Mr. Trump’s firing in March of Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the F.T.C. The president said he was removing her because she did not align with his agenda, despite a law that says the president can remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” Ms. Slaughter promptly sued.

Congress intentionally created such bipartisan commissions — made up of experts who could not be fired by the president without cause — to ensure that policy decisions would be made free from politics.

The F.T.C., created in 1914, protects consumers from deceptive practices and monopoly power. It is led by five commissioners who serve staggered seven-year terms; no more than three can be members of the same party.

The F.T.C. has been led by only Republicans since March, after Mr. Trump fired a second Democrat, Alvaro Bedoya. After initially challenging his firing, Mr. Bedoya resigned, citing financial pressures.

A district court judge said in July that Ms. Slaughter’s firing was illegal, and in early September, a divided court panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reinstated her.

That court said that a commissioner could not be fired without the required grounds of “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” The panel pointed to the job protections upheld by the 1935 decision that also involved a fired F.T.C. commissioner.

In that decision, Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., the court unanimously upheld removal restrictions for government officials on multimember boards. The justices in that case said President Franklin D. Roosevelt could not remove a member of the F.T.C. merely because of political differences.

But in the last 15 years, the court has repeatedly narrowed that decision to give the president more control over executive officials.

“Since 1789, the Constitution has been understood to empower the president to keep these officers accountable — by removing them from office, if necessary,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in 2010.

More recently, the court found that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional because it did not allow the president to fire its single director without cause. The court allowed the job protections to remain for multimember bodies like the F.T.C.

But in its emergency orders issued this year, the conservative majority has let the president temporarily remove leaders of agencies led by such multimember boards, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

As a result, D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, suggested in court filings that the precedent at issue was already a “dead letter” that should be overruled. Such tenure protections, he told the court in filings, unconstitutionally infringe on the president’s power to run the executive branch.

In response, Ms. Slaughter’s lawyers have told the court that getting rid of the precedent decades later would “profoundly destabilize institutions that are now inextricably intertwined with the fabric of American governance.”