President Trump has scored a massive victory in his effort to purge the federal government of Biden officials, the Hill reported.

The Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 that Trump may fire Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member Rebecca Slaughter - and that's not all.

The court has also agreed to review an FDR-era ruling that controls the president's power to hire and fire executive branch officials, Humphrey's Executor. The 90-year-old precedent is seen as critical to the power of so-called independent agencies.

Trump gets approval

Slaughter, a Democrat, was nominated by Trump to the FTC during his first term. She was renominated by President Biden.

The immediate impact of the Supreme Court's decision is that Trump may sack Slaughter while her legal challenge continues. But the controversy raises larger questions about the separation of powers that could produce a dramatic outcome.

Humphrey's bars the president from removing, at will, independent agency heads with quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial functions. The Trump administration, in its brief to the Supreme Court, argued the FTC has accrued "considerable executive power in the intervening 90 years" since the ruling.

The Supreme Court has sided with Trump in several legal disputes with independent agencies, making Slaughter's firing the latest evidence of the court's opposition to an autonomous bureaucracy operating outside executive control.

The justices previously overruled lower courts to let Trump fire National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Gwynne Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) member Cathy Harris, finding those agencies "exercise considerable executive power," SCOTUSblog notes.

Liberal wing erupts

Lawyers for Slaughter say the case was settled 90 years ago when the Supreme Court decided Humphrey's Executor. The case revolved around a Republican FTC commissioner who was fired by Democratic President FDR over policy disagreements.

Until the Supreme Court intervened, lower courts had sided with Slaughter, finding the administration fired her without evidence of “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office."

The Supreme Court's liberal wing erupted in dissent over Slaughter's firing, casting the decision as another example of the conservative majority bending to Trump's will.

"Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“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,” Kagan continued.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case in December.