Since taking office last month, President Donald Trump has fired dozens, if not hundreds of federal employees and officials who he believes are unlikely to support or will otherwise obstruct and undermine his policy agenda, but some of those terminated workers have turned to the courts to try and get their jobs back.

In one such case in which the fired official was temporarily reinstated by a court order, the presiding judge likened Trump to a "bull in a china shop" who is now seeking to shift blame for the "mess" he created on others, Newsweek reported.

The surprisingly blunt and accusatory rhetoric of the judge may have crossed a line on judicial decorum, and could potentially become an issue later given the good possibility this case has of being appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

District judge insults the president

It was just last week on Friday that Hampton Dellinger was fired from his presidential-appointed, Senate-confirmed position as special counsel of the Office of the Special Counsel, which protects federal whistleblowers -- a five-year term which he just begun almost exactly one year earlier.

On Monday, Dellinger filed a lawsuit to get his job back, and on Wednesday, Obama-appointed D.C. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued a temporary restraining order that blocked the Trump administration's move and effectively reinstated the fired official pending a hearing later this month on a more permanent preliminary injunction.

In addressing a claim by the administration that reinstating Dellinger would be "disruptive" to the OSC, the judge wrote, "There are no facts to suggest that an order maintaining Dellinger in the role he occupied for the past year would have a 'disruptive' effect on any administrative process; if anything, it would be his removal that is disruptive, as he suggests."

In a footnote attached to that statement, Jackson further explained, "Defendants imply that it would be too disruptive to the business of the agency to have Special Counsel Dellinger resume his work. But any disruption to the work of the agency was occasioned by the White House."

"It’s as if the bull in the china shop looked back over his shoulder and said, 'What a mess!'" she added in a questionable reference to President Trump.

Potentially headed to the Supreme Court

CNN reported that Dellinger's case has a decent chance of being appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Trump administration has already started taking steps to prepare for that eventuality.

Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin (D-IL) to inform him and his fellow Democrats that the Trump administration would no longer defend, and indeed would ask the Supreme Court to overturn, a key precedent that Dellinger and Judge Jackson relied upon to reverse his termination.

That case is known as Humphrey's Executor v. U.S., decided unanimously in 1935, in which the court at that time imposed limits on the president's authority to fire federal employees and officials of ostensibly "independent" agencies, boards, and commissions within the executive branch that were created by Congress and granted power to perform "quasi-legislative and judicial functions."

That ruling, per Harris, "prevents the president from adequately supervising principal officers in the executive branch who execute the laws on the president’s behalf."

Precedent may not survive court scrutiny

The Humphrey's Executor decision was nearly overturned four years ago in a case in which the Supreme Court limited the previously unchecked powers of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but Chief Justice John Roberts stopped short of doing so.

However, in a separate opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote that Humphrey's Executor posed a "direct threat to our constitutional structure and, as a result, the liberty of the American people," and added, "In a future case, I would repudiate what is left of this erroneous precedent."