As President Donald Trump faces setbacks dealt by federal courts in his efforts to reassert executive power, he has seen some early success in at least one area: his ability to remove the heads of independent agencies.
Trump scored a critical legal victory in his campaign to reshape independent federal agencies when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld his authority to dismiss Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel.
And in a pair of other disputes involving the agency heads in charge of union oversight and governing civil service protections, experts say Trump has strong arguments to support his removal power.
In a detailed opinion released March 10, the D.C. Circuit panel ruled Trump’s administration was likely to prevail in the Dellinger case, affirming that the Constitution prohibits even modest restrictions on presidential authority to remove heads of single-leader agencies, citing recent Supreme Court precedents, including Seila Law v. CFPB (2020) and Collins v. Yellen (2021). One day later, Dellinger dropped his case and forfeited his chance to appeal to the Supreme Court.
“The government has shown that the logic of those cases is substantially likely to extend to the Special Counsel,” the panel concluded. The judges noted that although OSC’s jurisdiction might differ slightly from other single-headed agencies, Supreme Court precedent from Collins emphasized that “the nature and breadth of an agency’s authority is not dispositive” when evaluating removal protections.
Trump has already won an important fight to trim bureaucracy unilaterally
Legal scholars have underscored the significance of this ruling. Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University, noted in a blog post for Reason‘s Volokh Conspiracy that the D.C. Circuit’s opinion demonstrates how broadly recent Supreme Court decisions extend presidential removal power. The panel explicitly rejected arguments distinguishing OSC’s power from other executive agencies, reinforcing expansive executive authority in this area.
“This is because, as a single-headed agency, it is hard to distinguish the Office of Special Counsel from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Housing Finance Administration, and thus hard to see how Dellinger could prevail under” recent Supreme Court precedent, Adler wrote.
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Ilya Shapiro told the Washington Examiner that despite the Trump administration’s clear victory, similar cases may not reach the Supreme Court if challengers continue dropping lawsuits after initial setbacks, as Dellinger did.
“If we keep having rulings against challengers like Dellinger, who then drop their suits, it might not get to the Supreme Court,” Shapiro said. But he added that the administration is clearly “primed” to bring these issues before the justices.
“These are Humphrey’s Executor issues, and the administration wants to vindicate the president’s authority and restore political accountability,” Shapiro explained. “If and when this gets to the Supreme Court, the justices are likely either to overturn Humphrey’s Executor or significantly cabin it, enabling Trump to remove these agency heads.”
Why is reversing this 1935 Supreme Court opinion important to Trump?
Humphrey’s Executor v. United States is a landmark 1935 Supreme Court decision that limited presidential authority by ruling that the president cannot remove leaders of independent regulatory agencies without specific cause set by Congress. The ruling established critical protections for agency independence, ensuring certain officials remain insulated from political pressure.
Trump is seeking to diminish or overturn this precedent to strengthen executive power, giving him broader authority to remove agency heads who disagree with his policies. Overturning or weakening Humphrey’s Executor could significantly expand presidential control over traditionally independent agencies, reshaping the balance of power within the federal government.
The administration still faces hurdles in other high-profile dismissals, including Merit Systems Protection Board Member Cathy Harris and National Labor Relations Board Member Gwynne Wilcox. During arguments on Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit appeared sharply divided on these cases. Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, strongly questioned the administration’s challenge to long-standing removal protections. In contrast, Judges Justin Walker and Karen Henderson, Trump and George W. Bush appointees, appeared receptive to arguments favoring executive power.
The legal controversies around Trump’s removals differ sharply from setbacks faced by his administration in broader civil service litigation, such as recent injunctions by a California federal judge blocking government-wide employee firings.
A major fight over 24,000 probationary workers lingers
Shapiro noted that while high-profile cases involving agency leaders have attracted significant attention, broader civil service reductions might eventually pose equally significant legal battles if procedural rules were not meticulously followed.
“Lawsuits involving lower level employees — that’s interesting litigation there, it hasn’t quite drawn big attention yet, because it doesn’t involve one important person” at the top, he said.
For example, California U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Bill Clinton appointee, told the Trump administration this week that fired probationary workers must be returned to their old jobs, not just placed on administrative leave.
Alsup previously ordered the administration to return the fired workers to their posts and clarified Monday that merely putting them on administrative leave defied his earlier order. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, mostly composed of Democratic appointees, ordered Alsup’s decision to remain in place on March 17 after the Trump administration appealed, though without ruling on the merits of the case.
It’s unclear the exact number of probationary workers the Trump administration has targeted for removal. In a separate case related to probationary worker layoffs, government attorneys wrote that there had been around 24,000 federal employees fired who were still in their probationary period.
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Shapiro said that just because federal employees are “covered under Civil Service protection statutes,” that does not mean “you can never lay off people.”
“So there’s potentially a clash there down the line, but that’s more significant in theory and reducing the size of government than just replacing agency heads,” Shapiro said.
