Lawsuit Says Trump Cannot Fire People In The Executive Branch Or Something

It’s like Democrats think that the Chief Executive cannot fire people who work in the Executive Branch, that they’re all protected

Trump’s power to fire executive branch officials will be tested in another lawsuit

A federal ethics enforcer swept up in a spree of firings President Donald Trump carried out Friday night is suing to get his job back.

The lawsuit from Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger is the latest case that will test the president’s power to fire officials across the executive branch despite federal laws that seek to protect those officials from politically motivated firings.

Dellinger was appointed by President Joe Biden to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which has no connection to the similarly titled special counsel offices that handle politically sensitive criminal cases at the Justice Department. The office enforces federal whistleblower laws and the Hatch Act — the main statute limiting political activity by federal employees. The office also fields complaints from veterans about discrimination upon their return from military service.

Dellinger sued Monday in federal court in Washington after being sacked Friday in an email sent by Sergio Gor, director of the Presidential Personnel Office in the White House.

So, they can be appointed by presidents, but, not fired by presidents? Or just when it is a Republican president? Because Biden sure fired a lot of Trump appointees.

McMahon said Dellinger’s office was like others where the courts have upheld the president’s authority to remove political appointees even when Congress tried to impose so-called “for-cause” removal protections.

But the judge also sounded skeptical of that argument, saying the special counsel post isn’t really a policymaking position.

“They don’t have a big bureaucracy underneath them. … It’s much more of a hands-on operation,” Jackson said, calling the office “a tiny little agency with a very narrow, little function, which is to protect people of either party from reprisal for whistleblowers against someone in either party.”

Any appointed position serves at the pleasure of the president. Most resign and go do something else when there is a party switch, but, Democrats no longer want to go, they want to jam up the system. But, supposedly

Various laws govern how the president can remove political appointees. Many can be dismissed by the president at will. But some appointees — particularly the members of so-called independent agencies, including the Office of Special Counsel — have statutory protections that limit the reasons they can be fired.

“The Special Counsel may be removed by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” Congress wrote in the 1978 law creating the post.

OK, how about how many of the whistleblowers during the Biden administration were treated poorly? That would have been Dellinger’s job to take care of them.

Legal challenges to Trump’s firings could send the issue back to the Supreme Court. In addition to Dellinger’s lawsuit, a Biden appointee to the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox, sued last week after being dismissed by Trump last month. The statute governing Wilcox’s position allows removal “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause.”

The White House said in its letter dismissing Wilcox that that language “does not operate as a restriction on [the president’s] ability to remove Board members” — a sign that Trump will argue in court that the Constitution gives him broad and perhaps unlimited power to dismiss executive branch employees and that efforts by Congress to impose so-called for-cause restrictions on that authority are unconstitutional.

So, Trump and future Republicans must deal with hardcore leftists in positions of power? What sense does that make?

The post Lawsuit Says Trump Cannot Fire People In The Executive Branch Or Something appeared first on Pirate’s Cove.