An appeals court decided the Trump administration could fire the head of the Office of Special Counsel, granting a small victory to President Donald Trump as he takes aggressive measures to bring independent agencies in the executive branch under his purview.
The order by the three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit gives the Trump administration a temporary ability to remove Hampton Dellinger from his special counsel post while his lawsuit plays out. The panel of judges comprised a Biden, Trump, and H.W. Bush appointee.
“This order gives effect to the removal of appellee from his position as Special Counsel of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel,” the panel wrote. “Appellants have satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending appeal.”
The appellate court set a briefing schedule that stretches into mid-April and noted oral arguments will take place soon thereafter, meaning Dellinger will be out of the job for several weeks or longer.
Dellinger sued Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, and other administration officials last month, saying he received a one-sentence job termination email from the White House in violation of federal law, which states that firings outside of the five-year terms of special counsels must be only “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
The Office of Special Counsel is typically tasked with vetting complaints from government employees about retaliation from their bosses or about Hatch Act violations. Dellinger has also been advocating, at times successfully, to reinstate thousands of probationary employees fired under Trump.
In his lawsuit, Dellinger’s attorneys argued the special counsel’s job was more critical than ever because of an “unprecedented number of federal employees” who have also been allegedly wrongfully terminated by Trump, including a slate of other independent watchdogs and career workers.
Many of those firings have prompted lawsuits parallel to Dellinger’s that challenge the legality of Trump bypassing language in statutes, including provisions that protect employees at independent agencies from politicized or arbitrary firings.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled last week in Dellinger’s favor, saying Trump does not have constitutional authority to flout federal law and fire him without cause.
“The Office of Special Counsel is not assigned responsibilities that include furthering the administration’s agenda,” Jackson wrote in her ruling.
Trump administration attorneys have argued in the case that Supreme Court precedent is on their side. Their perspective is likely to land once again in front of the high court in the wake of the new lawsuits surrounding firings of independent agency heads and mass firings of other federal workers.
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“Because OSC is an executive branch agency that exercises quintessentially executive functions, the President’s actions were consistent with recent Supreme Court precedent,” the attorneys wrote in court filings.
The Trump administration initially attempted to expedite Dellinger’s case by asking the Supreme Court to intervene in it, but the high court declined to weigh in right away.
