Chief Justice John Roberts at President Donald Trump’s 2026 State of the Union address Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled against President Donald Trump’s attempt to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, dealing a setback to Trump’s campaign to take control of monetary policy. The court’s 5-4 decision preserves Cook’s job as she continues to fight her removal, but it is not the final word on Trump’s bid to fire her. The narrow decision almost guarantees that this same dispute will return to the high court soon.
The majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts expresses explicit support for Fed independence. As an independent bank regulator, the Fed is run by a board of presidentially appointed governors who serve 14 year terms and are only removable for cause. The Trump administration argued that it had cause and that the Supreme Court could not review its removal decision. But the majority found the government’s arguments at odds with an independent Fed.
“To accept any one of those arguments would in effect transform the Federal Reserve’s for-cause protection into at-will employment—an interpretive leap out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our Nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference,” Roberts wrote.
The decision comes at a time when the future of Fed independence is in doubt. Trump’s pick for Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, is awaiting confirmation by the Senate. Keeping Cook in her seat steadies the ship, if only a little. The majority’s decision, however, is explicitly “narrow.” It requires that Cook be given proper notice of the cause of her removal and an opportunity to contest those charges. The decision does not lay out what that process looks like. And it saves for another day—which will almost certainly come soon—a court decision on whether Trump’s obviously pretextual allegations will be enough to remove Cook.
In a post on Truth Social Monday, Trump called the Cook ruling “strictly procedural” and pledged to “take appropriate action immediately to make sure that someone who has committed wrongdoing will not be making vital decisions concerning the Welfare of the United States of America!”
In short, this is a loss for Trump at this stage—but it may not be a permanent one.
In its ruling, the court declined to define what for-cause protection requires in order for a firing to be valid. Indeed, it hints that rather than leave it up to the president, it may ultimately be the final arbiter of what constitutes cause on a case-by-case basis. “Only after Cook has had the opportunity to respond to the charges made against her…may a final decision be made…And only then can the courts assess the validity and sufficiency of such charges,” Roberts wrote.
“To be clear, the ultimate question of whether the President can remove Cook for cause will depend in part on the underlying facts,” the chief justice added. “In this opinion, we have not addressed the facts.”
Here are those facts, as we know them.
Last August, the president posted a criminal referral against Cook on Truth Social, his social media platform, and demanded she resign. The accusation—created by Bill Pulte, Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Agency director—is that Cook claimed primary residency on two different mortgage applications. If this charge sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same one Pulte cooked up against two other Democrats—and it has yet to win the day against any of the president’s targets because, at most, Pulte appears to have discovered clerical errors. Five days after Trump’s social media post, the president announced in another post that he was firing Cook.
Trump claimed that the mortgage document discrepancy dug up by a political lackey was sufficient cause to fire Cook, and that the courts couldn’t review his decision to boot her, anyway. In other words, Trump’s argument is that he can state any cause for removal he likes, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It’s an obviously absurd argument because it renders the “for cause” removal restriction meaningless. Cook sued, and a district court judge blocked her removal, as did the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Trump turned to the Supreme Court, which agreed to decide whether Trump could temporarily remove Cook while her legal challenge to her firing moves forward.
The Supreme Court handed down its ruling Monday in conjunction with a related case—Trump v. Slaughter—in which the court gave Trump the power to remove the commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission and other formerly independent agencies. That decision follows a string of cases in which the court’s this conservative majority found that the president’s power over the executive branch trumped Congress’ attempt to insulate agencies from political pressure. During Trump’s second term, the court had already waved through firings of Democratic commissioners on the National Labor Relations Board, Merit Systems Protection Board, and Consumer Product Safety Commission on its shadow docket.
Logically, it’s hard to reconcile the court’s Cook decision with its rulings in Slaughter and other cases allowing Trump to fire independent agency commissioners. But the Federal Reserve Board’s independence is a pillar of the United States’ economy, and the US’s dominant global position makes that independence critical to the world economy, as well. Allowing Trump to turn interest rates, loans, bailouts, and access to the US banking system into political weapons would fundamentally reshape the economy and our democratic order. The Fed, in other words, is too important for one man to control.
To get out of this bind, Roberts—who wrote both the Cook and Slaughter decisions—insists that the Fed is simply different. Roberts’ opinion cites a history of independent bank regulators going back to the country’s founding and finds this history is relevant in determining whether it should uphold Congress’ legislative choice to make the Fed independent. “We see no reason to leave the public in limbo, or to sow doubt as to the status of one of our Nation’s (and the world’s) most important financial institutions,” Roberts wrote. “We would not so quickly unsettle this ‘special arrangement sanctioned by history.’”
This entire adventure stems from the Roberts Court’s own crusade to empower the president and hinder regulations disliked by big industry. The GOP-appointed majority has pushed forward its view of a “unitary executive” who controls all aspects of the executive branch, creating a roadmap for Trump to turn federal agencies into political weapons. Today, the court blesses Trump’s attempts to take control of most of the regulatory work that Congress deemed should be independent. But, at least to an extent, the Fed will be insulated from the consequences of that crusade.