7 Mar 2025

Head of OSC Drops Effort to Hold Onto His Job

by Bonnie | | 0

Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel, dropped his legal fight trying to hold onto his job after a Court of Appeals that mirrors the makeup of the Supreme Court sided with Donald Trump against him.

OSC was established by Congress as an independent watchdog agency about 50 years ago to protect the federal workforce from illegal personnel actions and to protect whistleblowers. During the month that Dellinger held onto his job through court orders, Dellinger got the Merit Systems Protection Board to order reinstatement of 5000 to 6000 probationary federal employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture who had been summarily fired by the regime.

Federal District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled in favor of Dellinger in his lawsuit, declaring his firing illegal. Yesterday, 5 March 2025, a three-member Court of Appeals panel lifted Jackson’s order while legal arguments continued.

Dellinger dropped his case and stepped down partly because he recognized that OSC would be run by an acolyte of Donald Trump for several months while the case made its way up to the Supreme Court, where it was clearly going. Even if he ultimately prevailed, which looked unlikely with the Appeals Court and Supreme Court being dominated by the same ideology, an incalculable amount of damage would be wrought during those months.

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