WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court could rule as early as this week on whether Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger should be reinstated and given access to his office, the first legal clash to reach the justices during this Trump administration over congressional protections for some federal officials.

Trump administration officials fired Dellinger earlier this month, according to court records, in a one-sentence email. The Office of Special Counsel, first created in the Carter administration, protects whistleblowers and federal employees more broadly within the executive branch, and a law protects the special counsel from removal except for cause.

Dellinger filed a lawsuit, and Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia entered a temporary restraining order that Dellinger be reinstated and given access to his office temporarily while the case played out.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to step in twice, preferring to allow Jackson to hold a hearing on the issue later this month.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration filed an application at the Supreme Court to undo Jackson’s ruling, calling it an “unprecedented assault on the separation of powers.”

The administration, citing the Supreme Court decision holding the president immune from most federal prosecution, argued that any restrictions on his removal of federal officials was unconstitutional. The law says the special counsel is removable by the president “only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

“Enjoining the President and preventing him from exercising these powers thus inflicts the gravest of injuries on the Executive Branch and the separation of powers,” the filing said.

Trump would prefer to name Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins to the role temporarily, the application said. The administration also said that even a brief order from the lower court would gravely harm the separation of powers.

“This Court should not allow lower courts to seize executive power by dictating to the President how long he must continue employing an agency head against his will,” the filing said.

Dellinger’s attorneys defended the lower court ruling in a Supreme Court filing Tuesday, arguing Trump should not be allowed to rush the court decision just because the Justice Department has taken the position that Dellinger’s firing protections are unconstitutional.

“In these disputes, care and deliberation are particularly important, and courts should be wary of Executive Branch demands to bypass the procedural rules that exist to protect sound judicial decisionmaking,” the filing said.

The firing of Dellinger is one of hundreds of personnel moves the Trump administration has made since Jan. 20, which includes laying off hundreds of federal employees and firing members of independent boards such as the National Labor Relations Board.

On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to at least temporarily reinstate a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board after she sued arguing her firing violated federal law.

In the last week, the Trump administration has sent letters to Congress saying that it believes that the removal protections for the special counsel and multimember boards like the NLRB and Federal Trade Commission are unconstitutional.

“The Department has concluded that those tenure protections are unconstitutional,” the letter on multimember boards said.

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