The US Supreme Court on Monday refused to allow Donald Trump to fire Federal Reserve Chair Lisa Cook as she stood firm in defending the central bank’s cherished independence against an unprecedented challenge from the Republican president.
The court, in a 5-4 decision, blocked Trump’s bid to become the first president to remove a Fed official since Congress created the central bank in 1913. During his second term, Trump also tested the limits of presidential power in many other ways.
Last August, Trump cited unproven allegations of mortgage fraud in an attempt to oust Cook, the first black woman to serve as Fed governor, while she cited it as a pretext for ousting her over disagreements over monetary policy.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the ruling, said Trump “failed to provide Cook with the procedural protections to which she was entitled under the law. Without such protection, she could not properly challenge the charges brought against her by the President.”
Federal Reserve governors “do not serve at the pleasure of the president—instead, they are elected to 14-year terms and can only be removed from office ‘for cause,'” Roberts added.
The Fed is the world’s most important central bank, the institution that sets the cost of credit for the United States and beyond, and which has been in Trump’s crosshairs since his return to the presidency in January 2025. As Fed chief, Cook helps set U.S. monetary policy along with the rest of the central bank’s seven-member board and the heads of the Fed’s 12 regional banks.
WATCH | Let’s remember how the Cook case reached the Supreme Court:
Trump said Fed Chairman Lisa Cook has been fired. She insists she’ll stay
US President Donald Trump said in a letter published on his Truth Social platform that he is removing Federal Reserve Chairman Lisa Cook from her position effective immediately. Cook said she will not resign and Trump does not have the authority to fire her.
Cook’s term was supposed to last until 2038. She was nominated by former Democratic President Joe Biden to serve in 2022. A court document released last week showed she spent $1.2 million on legal fees to fight her removal from office.
“The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the lower court’s ruling and affirm the need for real process and real cause recognizes that the independence of the Federal Reserve is essential to fulfilling Congress’s mandate to ensure price stability and maximum employment,” Cook said in a statement.
“I am grateful for this decision, not for my own sake, but for the sake of the American people, whose economic well-being depends on a central bank that fulfills its mission, not on political bullying.”
When creating the Federal Reserve in 1913, Congress passed a law called the Federal Reserve Act, which included provisions protecting the central bank from political interference by requiring governors to be removed from office by the president only “for cause,” although the law does not define that term or establish procedures for removal.
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As in other legal disputes, in the Cook case the administration argued for an expansive view of Trump’s power, saying that as long as the president determines the reason for removal, it is within his “irrevocable discretion.”
Cook’s lawyers argued that giving him that power would undermine the Fed’s independence, disrupt markets and create a roadmap for future presidents to manage monetary policy.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled in September that Trump’s attempt to remove Cook without notice or a hearing likely violated her right to due process under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The judge also said the charges against Cook likely do not provide sufficient legal grounds for her removal under the Federal Reserve Act because they relate to conduct that occurred before she took office.
Trump’s attacks on Cook and a separate criminal investigation his administration launched in January but later dropped against then-Fed Chairman Jerome Powell combine to pose the biggest challenge to the central bank’s independence since its founding.
Roberts and fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh were in the majority, along with three liberal justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented.
The ruling does not stop the Justice Department from seeking to charge Cook with mortgage fraud. Democrats have criticized the Trump administration for what it called politically motivated prosecutions and investigations of past and current critics of the president, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump can fire agency member, court rules
Trump has also used executive power to quickly change policies on immigration, military service, federal employment, etc. To date, the Supreme Court has allowed most of these policies to be implemented, despite legal challenges, on a preliminary basis, although the tariff decision has been a major exception.
Even as Cook received a stay, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld Trump’s firing of a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), expanding his powers over the government and overturning a 1935 precedent that recognized Congress’ power to protect the heads of some regulatory agencies from removing the president at will.
Rebecca Slaughter, as Federal Trade Commissioner, speaks at a roundtable on technology privacy laws on January 7, 2020 in Las Vegas. Trump fired Slaughter due to political differences in March 2025. (David Becker/Getty Images)
In overturning the landmark 1935 decision in Executioner Humphrey v. United States, the justices, in a 6-3 decision, invalidated tenure protections for Federal Trade Commission members created by Congress more than a century ago. Trump fired Rebecca Slaughter over political differences.
A 1914 law passed by Congress allows the president to fire FTC members only for cause, such as inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance, but not because of political differences. Similar protections apply to officials of more than two dozen other independent agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit System Protection Board.
The court in Humphrey the Executioner rejected Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt’s attempt to fire a Federal Trade Commission member over political differences, despite protections granted by Congress.
The Trump administration argued that the “modern Federal Trade Commission” had come to wield significant executive power in the decades since Humphrey’s Hangman decision, rendering the ruling void of its effect.
Slaughter, appointed to her post by Biden, was one of two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission whom Trump proposed firing in March 2025 from the consumer protection and antitrust agency. Slaughter’s term was expected to last until 2029.
Democratic senators and antitrust groups have expressed concern that Trump was seeking to strip the agency of control over large corporations with his firings.