[git] I can't delete a remote master branch on git

To answer the question literally (since GitHub is not in the question title), also be aware of this post over on superuser. EDIT: Answer copied here in relevant part, slightly modified for clarity in square brackets:

You're getting rejected because you're trying to delete the branch that your origin has currently "checked out".

If you have direct access to the repo, you can just open up a shell [in the bare repo] directory and use good old git branch to see what branch origin is currently on. To change it to another branch, you have to use git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/another-branch.