The dispute over President Trump’s attempt to fire the head of the Office of Special Counsel could, though it is captioned Bessent v. Dellinger, just as well be called Trump v. Deep State. That underscores the stakes in the clash, which could bear on whether Mr. Trump will be able to carry through his reforms of the executive branch by paring back the bloated federal payroll. The Supreme Court has so far held off from wading into the dispute.

That decision by the high court has allowed the case to play out in the lower courts, where, on Saturday, a federal district judge denied Mr. Trump’s attempt to fire without cause the Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger. Judge Amy Berman Jackson avers that her ruling is “extremely narrow and sui generis,” but that understates the consequences in this dispute. Mr. Trump is appealing Judge Jackson’s ruling to the riders of the District of Columbia Circuit.

Judge Jackson holds that Mr. Dellinger’s “job is to look into and expose unethical or unlawful practices directed at federal civil servants” and to protect whistleblowers. “This is not significant executive authority,” she says. “It is hardly executive authority at all.” Nothing to see here, folks, move along. She says “it would be ironic” — and crosswise with federal law — if Mr. Dellinger “could be chilled in his work by fear of arbitrary or partisan removal.”

Mr. Trump’s Justice Department, in its appeal to the Circuit court, disagrees with Judge Jackson’s appraisal of Mr. Dellinger’s job. “Since being reinstated,” Mr. Trump contends, Mr. Dellinger “has been prosecuting complaints on behalf of terminated federal employees and seeking stays of their terminations.” Mr. Trump’s appeal asks the circuit riders to “put an end to Dellinger’s rogue use of executive authority over the President’s objection.”

Mr. Trump’s request is based on Mr. Dellinger’s recent announcement that the Special Counsel would be leading a kind of resistance drive to the president’s firings of federal employees. Mr. Dellinger’s “office had determined that the firings might violate the law,” the Times reports. Mr. Trump’s terminations of probationary employees “without individualized cause” seems to be “contrary to a reasonable reading of the law,” Mr. Dellinger states.

Mr. Dellinger allows that “he would ask a government review board to pause the firings for 45 days,” per the Times. So much for Judge Jackson’s idea of him as a federal cipher with no “significant executive authority.” Mr. Dellinger appears to be operating in direct opposition to the president’s expressed wishes. So how can Judge Jackon say with a straight face that “this case does not present” an “affront to the President’s Article II authority”?

These columns have been following the Dellinger dispute closely not only because it was the first Trump case to reach the Supreme Court in the president’s second term, but because of its broader implications for the powers of the presidency and the separated powers. The Sun’s long-held view is that because the Constitution vests the power of the executive branch solely in the president, he or she must have authority to fire any executive branch employee.

Judge Jackson’s apparent confusion over the nature of Mr. Dellinger’s position is one that could be sorted out either at the circuit court, or by the Nine. If Mr. Dellinger is deemed to be an agency chief — or a “principal” officer, as the high court has termed key executive branch posts — Mr. Trump would appear to have precedent on his side to fire him. That’s based on the case of Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, from 2020.

Yet if the courts find that Mr. Dellinger is an “inferior” officer — having “no policymaking or administrative authority,” per Seila Law — then precedents, including one from 1886, suggest that he could be protected from being fired without cause. That could also bear on the cases of other federal employees Mr. Trump wants to fire. Should the high court hew to that view, it would amount to a win for Mr. Dellinger — and an anti-democratic Deep State.