The Trump administration prepared an application on Sunday asking the US Supreme Court to remove a lower court order blocking the firing of the head of the Office of Special Counsel. The request argued the order was “an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers that warrant[ed] immediate relief.”

The administration based its argument on several recent Supreme Court decisions. Seila Law LLC v. CFPB and Collins v. Yellen both affirmed a president’s power to remove officers serving as the “single head of an agency,” without showing cause. Additionally, the application cited Trump v. United States, in which the court stated that “the President’s management of the executive branch requires him to have unrestricted power to remove them [agency heads] in their most important duties.” Accordingly, the administration stated that a judicial restriction would inflict the “gravest of injuries on the Executive Branch.”

Trump removed Hampton Dellinger as the sole head of the Office of Special Counsel in January. Dellinger quickly filed a request for an emergency restraining order stating that the firing was illegal as no cause was shown for his removal. 5 U.S.C. § 1211(b) states that Special Counsel may only be removed for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

A district court allowed a temporary restraining order to prevent the firing until the court could review legal claims made by both sides. On Saturday, a federal appeals court declined to remove the order stating that it lacked the legal power to review the government’s appeal.

The Office of Special Counsel was created in 1979 to serve as “a secure channel for federal employees to blow the whistle by disclosing wrongdoing.”