By Dietrich Knauth

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A divided U.S. appeals court on Tuesday allowed Democratic U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter to resume her role at the agency, as Republican President Donald Trump tries to remove her from office.

In a 2-1 decision, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a lower court decision in favor of Slaughter to go into effect, rejecting the Trump administration’s request to delay the ruling during its appeal.

The court said that FTC commissioners may not be fired by a president without cause, saying that the law on this point has been clear for nearly a century.

“The government is not likely to succeed on appeal because any ruling in its favor from this court would have to defy binding, on-point, and repeatedly preserved Supreme Court precedent,” two judges wrote in the majority opinion.

A third judge, Trump appointee Neomi Rao, dissented, saying that federal courts likely have no authority “to order the reinstatement of an officer removed by the President.”

Slaughter said on Tuesday that she was heartened by the ruling and that Trump is “not above the law.”

“I’m very eager to get back first thing tomorrow to the work I was entrusted to do on behalf of the American people,” Slaughter said in an emailed statement.

The FTC enforces consumer protection and antitrust laws.

White House spokesman Kush Desai said that Trump acted lawfully when he removed Slaughter from her position, and said the Supreme Court has recently confirmed the president’s authority to remove the heads of executive agencies.

“We look forward to being vindicated for a third time,” Desai said Tuesday.

Trump had appointed Slaughter to her first term on the FTC in 2018. Democratic President Joe Biden designated her as the FTC’s acting chair in January 2021, and Biden appointed her to a second term in 2023, which is to end in September 2029.

A federal judge ruled in July that the Trump administration’s attempt to remove Slaughter did not comply with removal protections in federal law.

Under the FTC’s bipartisan structure, no more than three of the five commissioners can come from the same party. Congress placed restrictions on the hiring and firing of commissioners in an effort to insulate the agency from partisan politics.

Trump fired the two Democratic commissioners on the FTC in March, in a major test for the independence of regulatory agencies.

The dispute over Trump’s firing of Slaughter and fellow commissioner Alvaro Bedoya will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 90 years ago that FTC commissioners may be dismissed only for good cause, such as neglecting their duties. Bedoya formally resigned in June to take another job and is not part of the case.

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth in New York and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Leslie Adler and Nia Williams)