Supreme Court to consider limits on president's power to fire agency officials

State of play: The ruling on the court's emergency docket did not outline the conservative majority's reasoning for its decision, which the three liberal justices dissented.

• The justices will hear oral arguments in December on the precedent, known as Humphrey's Executor, which concerns a 1935 Supreme Court ruling that a president can only dismiss the head of an independent agency "for cause."

What they're saying: Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent that the conservative majority had in stay order by stay order "handed full control" of agencies to the president.

• "He may now remove — so says the majority, though Congress said differently — any member he wishes, for any reason or no reason at all. And he may thereby extinguish the agencies' bipartisanship and independence," she added.
• "Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars. Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation's separation of powers."

The intrigue: In a separate case, the Supreme Court is considering Trump's request to let him fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.

• However, the court has suggested that Federal Reserve officials have special protection based on the central bank's unique structure and thus should be treated differently from other agencies.

Go deeper: What to know about Humphrey's Executor, a case key to Trump's plans