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Left: President Donald Trump gives remarks during an event celebrating the 2024 Stanley Cup Champion the Florida Panthers in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025 (Photo by Aaron Schwartz/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images). Right: Hampton Dellinger (Office of Special Counsel).
President Donald Trump has been hit with yet another legal challenge related to controversial moves he’s made since taking office, with his widespread axing of government officials — including a Biden administration leader tasked with protecting federal whistleblowers — prompting two lawsuits now in less than a week.
Hampton Dellinger, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in February 2024 to lead the Office of Special Counsel and enforce whistleblower laws, filed a lawsuit Monday in the District of Columbia after being fired by the Trump administration on Friday “in a one-sentence email,” according to his federal complaint.
“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Special Counsel of the US Office of Special Counsel is terminated, effective immediately,” the email said, according to Dellinger’s complaint, which accuses Trump’s “purported removal” of the ethics enforcer as being “unlawful.”
“It has no basis in fact and thus cannot be squared with the statutory text,” the complaint says. “And it is in direct conflict with nearly a century of precedent that defines the standard for removal of independent agency officials and upholds the legality of virtually identical for-cause removal protections for the heads of independent agencies.”
Dellinger was appointed by Biden to serve a five-year term before he was fired Friday.
“The Special Counsel may be removed from that term ‘by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,”” his complaint says. “The constitutionality of that protection is dictated by nearly a century of binding Supreme Court precedent upholding materially identical restrictions.”
Dellinger’s suit comes less than a week after an employee of the National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency that enforces labor laws and protects workers’ rights to organize, sued Trump in federal court after being fired in January.
Gwynne A. Wilcox — a Biden appointee who filed her complaint last Wednesday — was fired via late-night email in what she claims was a blatant violation of the National Labor Relations Act, which allows the president to remove board members only in cases of “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause” — and only after “notice and hearing,” according to Wilcox’s complaint.
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“The President’s unprecedented removal of Ms. Wilcox defies 90 years of Supreme Court precedent that has ensured the independence of critical government agencies,” Deepak Gupta, an attorney for Wilcox, said in a statement. “Federal law is clear: The members of the National Labor Relations Board may only be removed for neglect of duty or misconduct, and only after a notice and a hearing. The President has violated the law.”
Wilcox blasted Trump’s attempt to remove her from the NLRB as being an “unlawful” slap in the face of the board and its members.
“When Congress established the National Labor Relations Board almost 90 years ago, it made sure that the law would protect its independence from political influence,” Wilcox’s complaint says. “My removal, without cause or process, directly violates that law. I hope to be able to fulfill the job that the Senate confirmed me to do so the crucial work of the NLRB can continue.”
Dellinger’s complaint says that by firing him from the Office of Special Counsel, the Trump administration “jeopardized” the functioning of an agency designed to stop exactly that.
“Congress authorized the OSC with a crucial investigative and oversight role to protect the integrity of the civil service in circumstances such as these,” the complaint says. “The recent spate of terminations of protected civil service employees under the new presidential administration has created controversies, both about the lawfulness of these actions and about potential retaliation against whistleblowers. The OSC is statutorily tasked with receiving such reports, investigating them and taking appropriate action. The President’s unlawful attempt to remove Special Counsel Dellinger from his office directly violates the modest but vital protections that Congress put in place and renders the OSC and the Special Counsel unable to fulfill their statutory mandate.”
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A White House official told POLITICO last week that Wilcox was among a group of “far-left appointees with radical records of upending longstanding labor law” who was fired by the Trump administration.
“They have no place as senior appointees in the Trump Administration, which was given a mandate by the American people to undo the radical policies they created,” the official said.
