Fired head of U.S. federal watchdog agency says he’s ending his legal battle over his removal by Trump

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen in the distance, framed through columns of the U.S. Senate at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON — The fired head of a federal watchdog agency said Thursday that he’s abandoning his legal battle against the Trump administration to get his job back, acknowledging he was likely facing a tough road before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hampton Dellinger said he was dropping his case a day after the federal appeals court in Washington sided with the Trump administration in removing him as the head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency dedicated to guarding the federal workforce from illegal personnel actions.

Dellinger’s removal could threaten efforts his office has made in recent days to challenge the Trump administration’s firing of thousands of federal workers. Hours before he was ousted Wednesday, a government board that enforces workers’ rights ruled that more 5,000 fired employees should be put back on the job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture following a request from Dellinger’s office.

It was not immediately clear who would replace Dellinger as special counsel.

The case had become a flashpoint in the debate over how much power the president should have to replace the leaders of independent agencies as he moves to radically reshape and shrink the federal government. Dellinger’s lawyers had argued it’s essential for the special counsel to remain independent from the president in order to properly perform their duties without political interference.

“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,” Dellinger said in an emailed statement.

Dellinger sued Trump last month after he was fired in an email with no explanation, despite a law that says special counsels can be removed by the president “only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama, quickly reinstated Dellinger in the job while he pursued his case.

Jackson on Saturday ruled that Dellinger’s firing was unlawful and ordered that he remain in his post. But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Wednesday lifted Jackson’s order blocking his removal, allowing the Trump administration to replace him while the judges weigh the legal arguments. It had been expected that the case would ultimately be decided by the conservative-majority Supreme Court.

Dellinger said the appeals court’s decision means the office “will be run by someone totally beholden to the President” for the months before he could get a final ruling before the Supreme Court. Furthermore, Dellinger said he believed his “odds of ultimately prevailing before the Supreme Court are long.”

“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.

Conservative justices have called into question limits on the president’s ability to remove the agency heads. In 2020, for instance, the court by a 5-4 vote upheld Trump’s first-term firing of the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Alanna Durkin Richer, The Associated Press