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.
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