Hampton Dellinger, a Biden-appointed federal watchdog head, ended his lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump‘s decision to fire him.
Dellinger was fired from his position at the Office of Special Counsel before his five-year term was set to expire. He sued the Trump administration over his firing, but the case quickly grew into a larger battle surrounding the legality of Trump’s sweeping civil service layoffs.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a ruling that allowed Dellinger’s firing to go ahead while the case continued, prompting him to throw in the towel.
“I think the circuit judges erred badly because their willingness to sign off on my ouster — even if presented as possibly temporary — immediately erases the independence Congress provided for my position, a vital protection that has been accepted as lawful for nearly fifty years,” Dellinger said of the ruling.
In his statement announcing the end of his lawsuit, Dellinger maintained that the reason for his lawsuit wasn’t his own employment but to protect those who report wrongdoing from retaliation.
“My fight to stay on the job was not for me, but rather for the ideal that OSC should be as Congress
intended: an independent watchdog and a safe, trustworthy place for whistleblowers to report
wrongdoing and be protected from retaliation. Now I will look to make a difference — as an
attorney, a North Carolinian, and an American — in other ways,” Dellinger wrote.
Dellinger’s decision to drop his legal fight means that a significant test of executive authority in the president’s ability to remove officials with statutory protections will not reach the Supreme Court, for now.
His petition prompted a Wednesday Merit Systems Protection Board order for the Trump administration to temporarily reinstate more than 5,600 fired U.S. Department of Agriculture employees.
Dellinger’s case raised broader questions about whether the longstanding precedent set in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), which limits the president’s power to remove certain independent agency officials, remains intact in an era where conservative legal circles are eager to expand presidential control over the executive branch.
Had Dellinger’s case been fully litigated, it may have offered the Supreme Court an opportunity to revisit Humphrey’s Executor, particularly in light of more recent rulings such as Seila Law v. CFPB (2020), which struck down removal protections for the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
HERE ARE THE LAWSUITS TARGETING TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDERS
While some legal experts viewed Dellinger’s position as weaker, given that he led a single-member agency rather than a multi-member commission, his case could have served as a key vehicle for revisiting the broader question of how much deference courts should give Congress in structuring executive agencies.
With Dellinger’s legal challenge abandoned, the focus may shift to other officials Trump has sought to remove, such as MSPB chair Cathy Harris. If similar cases move forward, they could provide a fresh pathway for testing the limits of presidential removal power and potentially creating new precedents.
