The US Supreme Court rules against Trump's request to fire Lisa Cook, the governor of the Federal Reserve

On Monday the US Supreme Court refused to allow Donald Trump to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook as it stood firm to protect the central bank's independence against an unprecedented challenge from a Republican president.

The court, in a 5-4 decision, blocked Trump's bid to become the first president to remove a Fed chief since Congress created the central bank in 1913. In his second term as president, Trump has tested the limits of presidential power in many other ways.

In August of last year, Trump cited unsubstantiated mortgage fraud allegations when he tried to oust Cook, the first black woman to serve as Fed governor, while calling it an excuse to remove her over differences in monetary policy.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the ruling, said Trump “failed to afford Cook the due process protections to which he was entitled by law. Without such protections, he would not have been able to properly challenge the charges the president has brought against him.”

Federal Reserve governors “do not serve at the pleasure of the president — instead they serve 14-year terms, and can only be removed 'for cause,'” Roberts added.

The Fed is the most important central bank in the world, the institution that determines the cost of credit for the United States and beyond and has been at odds with Trump since he returned to the presidency in January 2025. As the governor of the Fed, Cook helps set the monetary policy of the US and the rest of the board of the central bank with seven members and the heads of the 12 FDS.

Cook's tenure on the job was to last until 2038. He was nominated by former Democratic president Joe Biden in 2022. An official filing made public last week revealed he spent $1.2 million on legal fees to fight his removal.

“The Supreme Court's decision to vacate the lower court's order and affirm the need for due process and due process recognizes that the independence of the Federal Reserve is essential to fulfilling the congressional mandate of price stability and high employment,” Cook said in a statement.

“I appreciate this decision, not for my sake, but for the sake of the American people, whose economic well-being depends on a central bank that responds to its mission, not political intimidation.”

In creating the Fed in 1913, Congress passed a law called the Federal Reserve Act that included provisions to protect the central bank from political interference, requiring governors to be removed by the president only “for cause,” although the law did not define the term or establish procedures for removal.

As in other legal disputes, the administration argued against a broad view of Trump's powers in the Cook case, saying that as long as the president specifies cause for removal, that is within his “unreviewed discretion.”

Cook's lawyers argued that giving him that power would erode the Fed's independence, disrupt markets and pave the way for future presidents to direct monetary policy.

US District Judge Jia Cobb in September ruled that Trump's attempt to remove Cook without notice or a hearing may have violated his right to due process under the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. The judge also said that the allegations made against Cook may not have been legally sufficient grounds to remove him under the Federal Reserve Act as they related to conduct that occurred before he held this position.

Trump's targeting of Cook and a separate criminal investigation that his administration launched in January, but later dropped, against then-Fed chairman Jerome Powell together represent the biggest challenge to the central bank's independence since its inception.

Roberts and fellow justice Brett Kavanaugh were in the majority, along with the court's 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 decision does not prevent the Justice Department from seeking to indict Cook for alleged mortgage fraud. Democrats have criticized the Trump administration for what they say are politically motivated prosecutions and investigations of former and current critics of the president, including former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump can fire a member of the agency, court rules

Trump has also used executive authority to rapidly change policies on immigration, military service, federal employment and more. So far, the Supreme Court has allowed most of those policies to continue despite legal challenges, initially, although the tariffs decision was very different.

Even if Cook gets acquitted, the high court on Monday upheld Trump's firing of a member of the Democratic Federal Trade Commission (FTC), expanding his power over the government and overturning its 1935 constitution that recognized the authority of Congress to protect the heads of certain regulatory agencies from removal by the president at will.

Overturning the landmark 1935 decision in Humphrey's Executor v. In the United States, the justices, in a 6-3 decision, overturned tenure protections for FTC members established by Congress more than a century ago. Trump fired Rebecca Slaughter over policy differences.

A 1914 law passed by Congress allows the president to remove FTC commissioners only for cause — such as inefficiency, dereliction of duty or misconduct in office — but not for policy differences. Similar defenses include officials from more than a dozen other private agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Plan Protection Board.

Humphrey's executor's court rejected Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to fire the FTC member for policy differences despite temporary protections granted by Congress.

The Trump administration argues that the modern FTC has grown to wield more executive power in the decades since the Humphrey's Executor decision, which ended that decision's power.

Slaughter, who was nominated by Biden, was one of two Democratic FTC commissioners Trump moved to fire in March 2025 from the consumer protection and antitrust agency. The slaughter period was supposed to continue until 2029.

Democratic officials and anti-monopoly groups have expressed concern that Trump's firing seeks to end the agency's scrutiny of large corporations.