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’ve 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’ve 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 has sparked litigation. “Enjoining the President and preventing him from...
Legislators in Sacramento, California, are mulling over one of the most (if not the most) troubling state and local tax bills of the past decade. Senate Bill (SB) 799, introduced earlier this year...