Supreme Court rules that government watchdog fired by Trump may temporarily remain on the job
The Supreme Court on Friday dashed President Donald Trump’s plan to immediately fire the head of an independent agency that investigates whistleblower claims, allowing Hampton Dellinger to remain in the job through at least the middle of next week.
By declining to back Trump’s emergency appeal, the conservative court nominally sided with Dellinger, who President Joe Biden appointed in 2024 to lead the Office of Special Counsel for a five-year term but who White House officials fired in a brief email days after Trump returned to power.
The Dellinger appeal was the first to reach the Supreme Court tied to Trump’s whirlwind of activity since returning to the White House last month. A flood of litigation over executive actions, immigration, other firings and Elon Musk’s work for the government are simultaneously making their way through lower courts.
In an unsigned order, the court said it would hold the case on pause until February 26, when a temporary order handed down by a lower court is set to expire. A district court hearing is scheduled to consider whether to extend the pause on Dellinger’s dismissal.
But the order also left unresolved all of the questions posed by the case, meaning the fight will likely be back at the court in short order. Four justices – two liberals and two conservatives – dissented from the decision.
Pending before the justices was a technical question about whether a temporary order from a lower court that paused Dellinger’s dismissal for a few weeks should be blocked. But the court’s decision failed to resolve that question, essentially punting. If the lower court issues a preliminary injunction after that hearing, the Department of Justice could then appeal that ruling back up to the Supreme Court.
“The best explanation for why a majority of the justices opted to put off a ruling in this case for now is because of a concern that they’d otherwise open the floodgates to dozens of emergency requests when all that the lower courts had entered were time-limited temporary restraining orders,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
“This way, the court avoids endorsing that procedural move, while preserving the ability to resolve whether Dellinger should or should not be allowed to stay in his job as soon as the middle of next week,” he said.
Conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissented from the decision, asserting in a short opinion that the district court overstepped. Gorsuch said he would have ordered the district court to revisit its temporary order.
“The district court grappled with none” of the history and law surrounding similar cases in the past before ordering Dellinger to be reinstated, Gorsuch wrote. “If there are answers to the questions … they appear nowhere in the court’s decision.”
Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have denied the government’s emergency request, but they did not explain their position.
“I am glad to be able to continue my work as an independent government watchdog and whistleblower advocate,” Dellinger said in a statement after the ruling. “I am grateful to the judges and justices who have concluded that I should be allowed to remain on the job while the courts decide whether my office can retain a measure of independence from direct partisan and political control.”
Simmering below the surface of the case are more fundamental questions about Trump’s power to fire potential critics who enjoy for-cause removal protections in federal law. For now, those questions will remain unanswered. But they will almost certainly wind their way back to the court in the coming weeks.
The Office of Special Counsel is unrelated to special counsels like Jack Smith or Robert Mueller who are appointed to oversee politically sensitive Justice Department investigations. Instead, Dellinger handles allegations of whistleblower retaliation made on behalf of federal employees – including some who are also losing their jobs as Trump attempts to rapidly shrink the size of the executive branch. Created during the Carter administration, Congress made clear that the special counsel could be removed “by the president only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
The director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office fired Dellinger on February 7 in a brief email that cited none of those for-cause requirements, court records show.
The litigation could have far-reaching implications for Trump’s ability to control independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve. A group of law professors urged the Supreme Court in a brief Tuesday to insulate the Federal Reserve from whatever decision they make in Dellinger’s case, warning of the potential for “highly undesirable implications and consequences for the economy.”
Congress has granted several agencies a degree of independence so they can make decisions without being pressured by the White House. During his first term, Trump repeatedly leaned on the Federal Reserve to set lower interest rates, for instance. A lower rate can bump stock prices and make it cheaper for people to borrow money, often giving a boost to a president’s favorability. But lowering interest rates can also fuel higher inflation.
The board largely ignored Trump. If the president gets his way, he could simply remove board members and install replacements who will carry out his wishes.
In Dellinger’s case, a federal district court issued a temporary restraining order blocking Trump from enforcing the dismissal for a few weeks to give the court time to consider the case. Such temporary orders are, generally, not appealable. But the Justice Department under Trump appealed anyway, arguing that federal courts had committed an “unprecedented assault on the separation of powers” with the order.
In a 2-1 decision over the weekend, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit said the temporary order was not appealable. The two judges in the majority in that decision were appointed by former President Joe Biden. A third judge, appointed by Trump, said he would have granted the government’s request to block the temporary order.
This story and headline have been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.
© 2025 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved.
CNN Sans ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network.
Up next
Most read
MORE FROM CNN
NEWS & BUZZ
Supreme Court stiffs Trump, punts on firing whistleblower agency head
The Supreme Court stiffed President Trump in his administration’s first high court appeal by punting Friday on a request to greenlight the firing of the head of a whistleblower protection office.
The administration filed an emergency application asking the justices to wipe a lower court’s temporary reinstatement of U.S. special counsel Hampton Dellinger, whose office is tasked with protecting whistleblowers and prosecuting misconduct in the federal workforce.
The court “held in abeyance” the application until the lower court’s order expires Wednesday, effectively punting on whether the firing was legal and keeping Dellinger in his post for at least another few days.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, both members of the court’s liberal wing, voted to outright deny the administration’s request to greenlight the firing.
Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, two of the court’s conservatives, said they would’ve wiped the ruling reinstating Dellinger and disagreed with their colleagues that the ruling’s temporary nature meant it had not “ripened into an appealable order.”
“Respectfully, I believe that it has and that each additional day where the order stands only serves to confirm the point,” Gorsuch wrote, joined by Alito.
The dispute is the first lawsuit to reach the Supreme Court among several challenges to Trump’s firings of independent federal agency leaders with statutory removal protections, part of the administration’s broader effort to expand White House control of the agencies.
By signing up, I agree to the Terms of Use, have reviewed the Privacy Policy, and to receive personalized offers and communications via email, on-site notifications, and targeted advertising using my email address from The Hill, Nexstar Media Inc., and its affiliates
The list also includes Trump’s firings of Democratic appointees to multimember commissions like the Merit Systems Protection Board, National Labor Relations Board and Federal Labor Relations Authority.
Dellinger’s office, which is different from Justice Department special counsels like Jack Smith, who are appointed to oversee particular investigations, is in a prime position to question actions taken by the Trump administration.
The Office of Special Counsel provides an avenue for whistleblowers to report concerns about government wrongdoing and works to protect them from reprisal. It also responds to potential violations of the Hatch Act, the law that guards against electioneering by federal employees.
Nominated by former President Biden to lead the office, Dellinger sued after Trump fired him on Feb. 7 and quickly convinced a federal district judge to issue a temporary order reinstating him.
Such temporary orders are not normally appealable, but the Trump administration brought its demands for an exception all the way to the Supreme Court, casting the judge’s ruling as an assault on the separation of powers.
“When a district court crosses a constitutional red line and purports to bar the President from replacing an agency head he does not want to entrust with executive power—potentially for up to a month—this Court can and should intervene,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in court filings Wednesday.
Dellinger’s attorneys told the justices they had no jurisdiction at this stage of the case.
“That rule protects core judicial interests in orderly administration and sound deliberation; it also avoids needless inter-branch conflict and premature escalation of politically fraught disputes,” Joshua Matz, Dellinger’s attorney, wrote in court filings.
“But as evidenced by this very case—which reached the Supreme Court less than six days after it was first filed—the government now prefers a new arrangement,” Matz continued. “To accept its theory and grant its request for relief would be to invite more of the same: a rocket docket straight to this Court, even as high-stakes emergency litigation proliferates across the country.”
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
THE HILL 400 N CAPITOL STREET NW, SUITE 650 WASHINGTON DC 20002
© 1998 – 2025 NEXSTAR MEDIA INC. | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
TRENDING:
SPONSORED:
JUST IN
More Court Battles News
SEE ALL
Video/Hill.TV
SEE ALL HILL.TV
SEE ALL VIDEO
Top Stories
SEE ALL
Most Popular
News
Policy
Video
Opinion
Resources
Other Areas
Contributors
About Us
Sign up for the Morning Report
Supreme Court weighs in on its first Trump 2.0 case
Supreme Court weighs in on its first Trump 2.0 case
By Jordan Rubin
The Supreme Court’s first decision on a Donald Trump case in his second term was a choice to put off weighing in for now on his power to fire the head of an independent agency. In response to the government’s emergency application to upend a lower court ruling that stopped Trump from immediately firing Office of Special Counsel head Hampton Dellinger, the court said Friday that it’s holding off on deciding so long as a temporary restraining order against the government is in effect through Wednesday.
So the court declined to immediately give Trump the power he wants or to say he doesn’t have the power he claims. What the court thinks will become clearer during further litigation. There’s a trial court hearing scheduled for Wednesday on the matter, and the issue could certainly come back to the justices for a fuller decision in the future.
Democratic-appointed Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said the administration’s application should have just been rejected, while Republican-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissented, with Gorsuch writing an opinion joined by Alito explaining why he would have vacated the lower court order against the government.
The federal government had sought emergency relief for Trump to be able to fire the head of an independent watchdog agency, after lower courts rejected Trump’s bid in one of the flurry of early actions in his second term that have sparked litigation. “Enjoining the President and preventing him from exercising these powers thus inflicts the gravest of injuries on the Executive Branch and the separation of powers,” the administration wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency requests from the District of Columbia.
The government application sought to undo a trial court judge’s temporary restraining order against the government — set to run through Wednesday while lower court litigation continues — and to immediately pause the order while the justices consider the matter.
Lawyers for Dellinger, the Office of Special Counsel head whom Trump sought to remove, urged the justices to stay out of it. They argued that the government’s application was procedurally premature and substantively lacking. “To accept its theory and grant its request for relief would be to invite more of the same: a rocket docket straight to this Court, even as high-stakes emergency litigation proliferates across the country,” they wrote.
The application follows the administration’s recent statement that it’s prepared to seek the reversal of Humphrey’s Executor, a 1935 Supreme Court precedent protecting federal agency independence that’s implicated by Dellinger’s case and others as Trump tries to consolidate power in his White House.
Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MSNBC, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
© 2025 MSNBC Cable, L.L.C.
