Supreme Court Rejects, for Now, Trump’s Bid to Fire Government Watchdog

The Supreme Court, in its first decision on President Trump’s use of executive power in his second term, ruled on Friday that he cannot, for now, remove a government lawyer who leads the watchdog agency that protects whistle-blowers.

But the court’s brief, unsigned order indicated that it may soon return to the issue, noting that a trial judge’s temporary restraining order shielding the lawyer, Hampton Dellinger, is set to expire next week.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said that they would have rejected the Trump administration’s request for Supreme Court intervention outright. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., filed a dissent.

The majority, Justice Gorsuch wrote, presumably acted as it did because temporary restraining orders like the one in place in the case generally cannot be appealed — that is, he said, it “may not yet have ripened into an appealable order.”

“Respectfully,” he added, “I believe that it has and that each additional day where the order stands only serves to confirm the point.”

The court’s order came amid a blitz of executive actions, including ones seeking to remove thousands of federal employees, many of them in roles long thought protected from summary dismissal.

Mr. Dellinger has served as head of the Office of Special Counsel, which was created by Congress in 1978 to protect government whistle-blowers. It is unrelated to the special counsels appointed by the Justice Department.

The law says the special counsel must be confirmed by the Senate, serves for a five-year term and “may be removed by the president only for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

Mr. Dellinger, who was confirmed last year, was fired by an administration official in a terse email on Feb. 7. It did not say why.

He sued, and Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington entered a temporary restraining order allowing Mr. Dellinger to keep his job for two weeks while she considered whether to enter a preliminary injunction. The order expires on Feb. 26.

Temporary restraining orders, as the name suggests, are provisional, in place for brief periods and generally meant to preserve the status quo while judges get their bearings. Preliminary injunctions are more lasting judicial commands generally issued after substantial briefing and a hearing.

Justice Gorsuch wrote that there were powerful reasons to “look behind the label” and treat the temporary restraining order in Mr. Dellinger’s case as a preliminary injunction, which can be appealed.

One reason, he wrote, was that the judge had done something extraordinary. “The court effectively commanded the president and other executive branch officials to recognize and work with someone whom the president sought to remove from office,” Justice Gorsuch wrote.

He added that the relief Mr. Dellinger sought was unusual, seeking not just back pay but asking a court to order that he be reinstated.

After a divided three-judge panel of a federal appeals court said it lacked jurisdiction to consider the matter, that administration turned to the Supreme Court.

“This case involves an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers that warrants immediate relief,” Sarah M. Harris, the acting solicitor general, wrote, adding: “These judicial rulings irreparably harm the presidency by curtailing the president’s ability to manage the executive branch in the earliest days of his administration.”

In response, Joshua A. Matz, a lawyer for Mr. Dellinger, agreed that the case presented “weighty and complex questions of constitutional law.” But Mr. Matz said Supreme Court review was premature.

The justices, he wrote, should not rule on such fundamental questions in the context of a fast-moving emergency application arising from a temporary restraining order, saying it would amount to declaring a “five-alarm fire” based on a temporary court action.

He added that ruling prematurely, before full consideration of the case, could “provoke destabilizing, harmful consequences.”

Ms. Harris wrote that the legal issues were straightforward and asked the court to address them immediately. The court’s decision in July in Trump v. United States, granting Mr. Trump substantial immunity from prosecution, made clear that the administration must prevail, she said.

She also cited the case as an example of a “broader, weekslong trend” by lower court judges to impinge on Trump’s constitutional powers by issuing temporary restraining orders that have halted various policies. Among them, she wrote, were orders denying access to Treasury Department data and prohibiting the administration from suspending foreign aid money.

Mr. Matz countered that “this would be an especially unfortunate moment at which to weaken” the Office of Special Counsel, “given the historic upheaval currently occurring within federal employment and the continued importance of ensuring that whistle-blowers are guarded from reprisal.”

Ms. Harris cited two recent decisions, involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, that had concluded that presidents may fire the heads of agencies led by a single official at will.

After the court ruled in the second case in 2021, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. fired the head of the housing agency. Not long after, citing the earlier decisions, he fired the head of the Social Security Administration.

Under those precedents and practices, Ms. Harris wrote, the case involving Mr. Dellinger was an easy one.

Mr. Matz acknowledged that the court had allowed for such firings in the past, at least where the agencies in question had broad authority.

But he said the Office of Special Counsel has far more limited responsibilities. Indeed, he wrote, the Supreme Court distinguished it from the C.F.P.B. in the decision allowing the removal of its leader.

Presidents of both parties have expressed reservations about whether Congress is entitled to place limits on the president’s power to remove the head of the Office of Special Counsel. But the Supreme Court has suggested that the agency may have distinctive features that justify differing treatment.