Bessent v. Dellinger
The Supreme Court declined to immediately step in after a federal judge ordered that the head of the Office of Special Counsel remain on the job despite President Trump firing him — instead waiting for the temporary court order to expire on its own by February 26.
The case leaves unresolved significant questions about whether courts can order the reinstatement of executive officials and what limits, if any, Congress can place on the President's power to fire them.
How it got here: The district court issued a TRO reinstating Dellinger; the D.C. Circuit declined to review it; the government filed an emergency application asking the Supreme Court to vacate the order.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Hampton Dellinger served as the head of the Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that enforces laws protecting government workers from political abuse. President Trump fired him on February 7, 2025. Dellinger sued, arguing that a federal law allowed him to be removed only for specific reasons, not at the President's whim. A federal judge in Washington temporarily ordered him reinstated while the lawsuit played out.
The question before the Court
Did a federal court have the power to order the President to keep a fired federal official in his job while a lawsuit over that firing plays out?
The Court's answer
The Court declined to act immediately. It placed the government's emergency request to undo the reinstatement order on hold until February 26, the date the temporary order was already scheduled to expire on its own. The practical effect was that Dellinger remained in office for those additional days while the dispute shifted to the lower courts.
The Court did not rule on whether the President lawfully fired Dellinger, whether Congress can limit the President's removal power over the Special Counsel, or whether courts have the historical authority to order the reinstatement of a removed executive official. Two justices (Sotomayor and Jackson) would have gone further and simply denied the government's request outright; two others (Gorsuch and Alito) dissented, arguing the Court should have vacated the reinstatement order immediately.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Federal workers and agency officials protected by laws restricting their removal face uncertainty about the strength of those protections. The underlying dispute is part of a broader wave of litigation over presidential removal power, and the eventual ruling will affect whether Congress can shield other agency heads from at-will firing and whether courts can order reinstatement when they are fired.
What changes now
The temporary restraining order expired on February 26, 2025, the day the Court's abeyance was set to end. The district court held a hearing that day on Dellinger's request for a longer-lasting preliminary injunction. The underlying dispute — whether the President lawfully fired Dellinger and whether courts can order reinstatement of removed executive officials — was expected to continue working through the lower courts and could return to the Supreme Court.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the President lawfully fired Dellinger, whether Congress can limit the President's removal power over the Special Counsel, or whether courts of equity have historical authority to reinstate a removed executive official. Those questions remain open. The order applies only to this TRO and does not address the protections of other federal officials.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Sotomayor
Justices Sotomayor and Jackson did not write a separate opinion but noted in the Court's order that they would have denied the government's application outright, rather than holding it in abeyance. Their position was more favorable to Dellinger than the Court's middle-ground approach — a simple denial would have left the TRO in place with no qualification.
Dissent — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch argued the Court should have reviewed and vacated the reinstatement order immediately. He contended the TRO was functionally a preliminary injunction because it commanded the President to recognize and work with a fired official. More fundamentally, he raised the question of whether courts of equity have ever had historical power to order the reinstatement of a removed executive official — a remedy with virtually no precedent at the founding — and argued the lower court should have been sent back to address that threshold question before ordering any equitable relief.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Courts normally cannot hear emergency appeals of temporary restraining orders (TROs) — short-term court orders that last only days. The government asked the Supreme Court to treat this TRO as something more reviewable, either as a preliminary injunction (a longer-term court order) or under the All Writs Act, a law that gives courts broad power to act when necessary to protect their jurisdiction.
- Because Dellinger himself acknowledged the TRO would expire by February 26 — just days away — the Court found it more practical to wait and let the lower court hold its already-scheduled hearing than to resolve contested questions about whether the Supreme Court even had power to review a TRO at this stage.
- Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Alito, argued in dissent that the TRO was functionally acting like a preliminary injunction — since it directed the President to recognize and work with an official he had removed — and had therefore ripened into something the Court could and should review immediately.
- The dissent raised a foundational question the lower court had not addressed: courts of equity, which have the power to order specific actions like reinstatement, were apparently powerless at the time of the founding to block the removal of executive officers. Historical precedent — including the Court's own nineteenth-century decisions — treated it as 'well settled' that equity courts had no authority over the appointment or removal of government officials.
- The dissent further noted that the only available alternative remedy — a legal writ called quo warranto, which courts historically used to decide who was entitled to hold an office — was never invoked by Dellinger and cuts against creating a new equitable power to reinstate agency heads, since equity courts traditionally stepped aside when a legal remedy was available.