The fired head of a federal watchdog agency said on Thursday he was ending his legal battle over U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to remove him from office after a federal appeals court allowed the White House action.
Hampton Dellinger, who headed the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, said in a statement he was ending his lawsuit in light of Wednesday's court ruling, saying the odds of him ultimately prevailing before the U.S. Supreme Court were long.
Dellinger, an appointee of Trump's Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, said he believed the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had wrongly erased the independence Congress provided for his post.
But he said he would abide by it, even if it means his agency, which protects federal employees from being punished for whistleblowing and other practices, will be run by "someone totally beholden to the president."
"I strongly disagree with the circuit court's decision, but I accept and will abide by it," Dellinger said. "That's what Americans do."
The case marked an early test of the Republican president's ability to rein in independent agencies and replace their leaders as part of his efforts to reshape the federal government.
Dellinger's case previously reached the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first legal battle involving Trump's actions to come before the top U.S. judicial body since Trump's return to the presidency in January.
At that time, the Supreme Court declined to allow Trump to immediately fire Dellinger while a judge who last month had temporarily blocked his removal weighed whether to issue an injunction.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson did so on March 1, saying allowing Trump the ability to fire Dellinger before his term was over would give the president "a constitutional license to bully officials in the executive branch into doing his will."
But the D.C. Circuit on Wednesday put that decision on hold, resulting in Dellinger's swift removal.
The court ruling came hours after Dellinger helped secure an order from the Merit System Protection Board directing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to temporarily reinstate thousands of workers who lost their jobs as part of Trump's mass layoffs of the federal workforce.
That board hears appeals by federal government employees when they are fired or disciplined and has proved to be a potential roadblock in the Trump administration's efforts to purge the federal workforce.
Trump also fired the board's Democratic chair, Cathy Harris. A judge ordered her reinstated, but the administration has appealed that decision as well.
