Supreme Court Says Trump Can’t Fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook

The Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s effort to seize control of the Federal Reserve on Monday in a 5-4 ruling in Trump v. Cook, finding that he could not fire Reserve Board governor Lisa Cook based solely on made-up charges of mortgage fraud.

The decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson denies the Trump administration’s request to stay a lower court order that prevented Trump from removing Cook.

That is where the decision ends. But Roberts also argued that Trump’s further arguments — that the president’s power to fire Federal Reserve board governors for cause is not reviewable by courts and that there is a low bar to prove cause for such firings — are not likely to succeed.

“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 writes.

In a bid to take control of the Federal Reserve, Trump purported to fire Cook on Aug. 25, 2025. When Congress created the Federal Reserve, it stipulated the president could only fire board governors for cause and not for policy disagreements — an effort to insulate the economic regulators from political concerns.

Trump claimed that mortgage fraud claims against Cook, dredged up by Federal Housing Finance Agency Chair Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist, amounted to cause for her firing. Cook’s removal would provide Trump an opportunity to appoint a new board governor, one who would be more likely to pursue Trump’s desired policy of lowering interest rates. Those claims against Cook, however, have been discredited.

Cook sued to remain in her seat. A district court judge ruled that Trump could not fire Cook as “conduct that occurred before they began in office” cannot be used as a reason for a president to fire a governor for cause. After the D.C. appeals court then declined to stay that order, which allowed her to stay in her position, Trump appealed to the Supreme Court.

The arguments before the court in January did not go well for Trump. Multiple conservative justices scoffed at the idea that the president could circumvent the board’s for-cause removal protections by inventing a cause.

“It incentivizes a president to come up with … trivial or inconsequential or old allegations that are difficult to disprove,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, said.