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Chief Justice Roberts last night issued an “administrative stay” of Judge Amir Ali’s order to the State Department to make certain payments to aid contractors by midnight yesterday. (See yesterday’s Roundup on Judge Ali’s order.) Around the same time yesterday evening that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the government’s request for emergency relief from the district court order, the government asked the Supreme Court to vacate the order on various grounds, and for an administrative stay. The administrative stay ordered by the Chief Justice is a temporary pause on the district court order while all nine Justices consider the application to vacate the order. The Chief Justice required any response to the application to be filed by noon on Friday, which means that the pause on Ali’s order will continue for at least a few days. (D.C. Circuit dismissal.) (Government’s application for Supreme Court review.) (Chief Justice Roberts’s administrative stay.)
D.C. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson extended for three days the temporary restraining order (TRO) reinstating Hampton Dellinger as head of the Office of Special Counsel. Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris argued in a letter to the Supreme Court following Judge Berman Jackson’s decision that since the Court held the government’s application in abeyance, “the harms to the Executive Branch from the district court’s TRO have become even more concrete.” Harris requested that the Court “at a minimum continue to hold the application in abeyance, if the Court does not grant it now that the TRO has been extended.” (Order.) (Harris’s Letter.)
The Merit Systems Protection Board stayed the Trump administration’s firing of six probationary employees following a complaint from Delligner. The board noted that “deference … should be afforded” to the Office of Special Counsel “in the context of an initial stay request and the assertions made in the instant stay request.” (Order.)
President Trump signed a memo Tuesday stripping the security clearances from lawyers and other individuals at Covington & Burling involved with the firm’s representation of former Special Counsel Jack Smith before he resigned from the Justice Department in January. The order also directs the Attorney General and heads of agencies to terminate engagement with the firm. (Politico.) (Memorandum.)
Nick Bednar argued that “Trump’s efforts to fire Dellinger threaten the rights of federal employees and [the Office of the Special Counsel’s] role in protecting them.” (Lawfare.)
Christopher Moore contended that the “administrative stays” that district courts have been issuing to block executive action “rest on doubtful legal authority,” and that they are in fact injunctions—not stays. (SSRN.)