The appeal claims the lower courts’ block “involved an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers.”
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court after the U.S. Court of Appeals refused to overturn a district court ruling that blocked the president from firing the head of the Office of Special Counsel. The official sued the president’s administration after he was dismissed from the government watchdog agency.
“This case involves an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers that warrants immediate relief,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in the appeal. “As this Court observed just last Term, ‘Congress cannot act on, and courts cannot examine, the President’s actions on subjects within his ‘conclusive and preclusive’ constitutional authority”—including “the President’s ‘unrestricted power of removal’ with respect to ‘executive officers of the United States whom [the President] has appointed.’”
“In the last five years, this Court has twice held that restrictions on the President’s authority to remove principal officers who serve as the sole heads of executive agencies violate Article II—in those cases, the single heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Housing Finance Agency,” she continued.
“Whatever the agency, for the President to discharge his constitutional duty to supervise those who exercise executive power on his behalf, the President can ‘remove the head of an agency with a single top officer’ at will.“
The appeal referenced President Biden’s removal of the head of the Social Security Administration in 2021, stating that President Trump similarly “engaged in an uncontroversial exercise of his Article II powers” in removing the plaintiff.
As the Lord Leads, Pray with Us…
- For the justices of the Supreme Court to be discerning as they consider the appeal from President Trump’s Justice Department.
- For Solicitor General Harris as she makes the case for the president’s authority to exercise his constitutional powers.
Sources: Daily Wire, The Hill
