SCOTUS Allows Blockade On Trump’s Fed Firing To Remain

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to halt a lower court blockade against President Trump’s firing of Democrat Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve on Monday. The decision was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining the court’s liberal justices in the majority.

Known as Trump v. Cook, the case deals with Trump’s August 2025 decision to fire Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud prior to her time at the agency. Cook’s legal team argued that she was unlawfully removed because she was not afforded a formal removal notice or hearing — claims which the government contended aren’t required under the “for cause” removal statute.

D.C. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, issued an injunction preventing Cook’s removal in September. The Trump administration filed its emergency application asking SCOTUS to permit Cook’s removal while litigation continued after its application to do so was rejected by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In allowing Cobb’s injunction to remain in place, Roberts wrote for the majority that “Congress limited the President’s power to remove Governors for good reason — ‘[t]o preserve the independence of the Federal Reserve’ and to continue the ‘long tradition’ of ‘monetary policy . . . exercised independent of . . . executive influence.” Any proposed alteration to “that scheme,” he surmised, “must come from Congress, not the courts.”

“That is why we cannot accept the Government’s contentions in this case. To do so would allow the President to remove a member of the Federal Reserve at any time, for any reason, without any notice before, and without any judicial check after. That would turn for-cause protection into little more than at-will employment,” Roberts wrote.

The chief justice went on to note that “the ultimate question” of whether Trump can remove Cook “for cause will depend in part on the underlying facts.” He further underscored that the court’s decision does not address those facts, “as they have yet to be found or analyzed under the relevant legal standards.”

Rather, we have simply addressed the parties’ arguments about the appropriate legal standards under which the facts must be evaluated. The application for a stay is denied,” he concluded.

While joining the majority opinion in full, Kavanaugh authored a concurrence expressing agreement that the court “should not leave open the question whether the Federal Reserve can remain an independent agency in the wake of” the court’s recent Trump v. Slaughter ruling, in which the court held that presidents can remove members of so-called “independent agencies” like the Federal Trade Commission. He further reiterated concerns he espoused during oral arguments about the Fed’s “independence” and that “[e]ven temporary uncertainty” about its status could cause potential “political upheaval, including confusion about whether the President could immediately remove multiple Governors at will, as well as turmoil in the U. S. and world economies.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also authored a concurring opinion, in which she argued that the government’s application for relief “could be resolved by evaluating the equities alone.”

Meanwhile, the dissent was comprised of multiple opinions. Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett authored solo dissents, while Justice Samuel Alito authored an opinion that Justice Neil Gorsuch joined.

In expressing disagreement with the majority’s holding, Thomas argued that “[a]pparent mortgage fraud was a ’cause’ to remove Cook” and reemphasized a point he raised during oral arguments — that “the statute authorizing the President to remove Cook for ’cause’ says nothing about notice or a hearing, so it does not require notice and a hearing.”

“Any other result would violate Article II of the Constitution, under which the President may remove executive officers at will. The Court makes many policy arguments for an ‘independent’ banking agency that exercises executive power free from accountability … but those are ultimately arguments against the Constitution,” Thomas wrote.

The senior justice additionally argued that federal courts do not possess “the authority to enter the relief that the Court upholds today.” He aptly noted, “Although the Court expresses concern that the President removed a Board member for ‘the first time in the Federal Reserve’s 111-year history,’ … it expresses no such concern that it today upholds an injunction against the President’s removal of an executive officer for the first time in the Constitution’s 237-year history.”

Writing on behalf of himself and Gorsuch, Alito noted the “many thorny legal questions” at issue in the case and how “the lower courts … have passed on very few of these issues and have done so in a preliminary and rushed fashion.” In saying that he would decide the application “solely on the two issues that the District Court addressed” — whether “for cause” removal applies to pre-office conduct and whether Trump violated Cook’s due process rights — he signaled his intent to side with the government because Cobb “resolved those issues incorrectly.”

“Because the courts below resolved these two issues incorrectly, I would conclude that the President has shown a likelihood that we would reverse at this preliminary stage, leaving all other issues to be developed on remand in the first instance,” Alito wrote.

In her opinion, Barrett expressed agreement with several of the points raised by Alito and similarly noted the many unresolved questions that the lower courts did not address — including whether the “removal restriction in the Federal Reserve Act [is] constitutional.” In doing so, she argued that the court’s Cook ruling “is in serious tension with” its Slaughter decision and creates “a special exception ‘”sanctioned by history”‘ and based on the Federal Reserve’s role in setting monetary policy.”

“How can history support both a categorical rule and a carveout? … Do all the Federal Reserve’s existing regulatory powers have the requisite connection to monetary policy? If not, are they grandfathered in? And is the Federal Reserve unique, or might history sanction other exceptions too? The Court does not say,” Barrett wrote. “For present purposes, though, the most significant problem is that the Court decides this issue at all — not to mention the many others covered in its opinion. While a modest approach would have been appropriate, the Court chooses to go big. Its opinion sets precedent on a series of important issues, with implications that extend well beyond this case.”

Litigation over Cook’s removal will continue throughout the lower judiciary.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood