SUPREME COURT TO ADJUDICATE THE POWER OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH

Trump administration to ask Supreme Court to keep fired government watchdog off the job as case pends

A lower court temporarily reinstated Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel, after he sued the administration this month for firing him. 

Feb. 17, 2025, 12:13 AM EST

By Daniel Barnes, Michael Kosnar and Megan Lebowitz

The Trump administration will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that ordered a government ethics watchdog reinstated to his post after the president fired him.

Hampton Dellinger, leader of the whistleblower protection agency the Office of Special Counsel, sued the Trump administration after he was fired this month.

A district judge had ordered Dellinger, a Biden appointee, to be temporarily reinstated during ongoing legal proceedings. A panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., denied the Trump administration’s request to overturn the district judge’s order on procedural grounds Saturday.

The Justice Department plans to elevate the case to the Supreme Court, asking it to intervene by allowing the administration to keep Dellinger off the job while litigation proceeds, according to a copy of the application provided by a Justice Department official. The application has not yet been docketed at the Supreme Court.

The application argues that lower courts’ actions limited President Donald Trump’s ability to manage the executive branch and that “preventing him from exercising these powers thus inflicts the gravest of injuries on the Executive Branch and the separation of powers.”

“The United States now seeks this Court’s intervention because these judicial rulings irreparably harm the Presidency by curtailing the President’s ability to manage the Executive Branch in the earliest days of his Administration,” read the application, which was signed by acting Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris.