Supreme Court leaves Fed Governor Cook in place

On 29 June 2026 the Supreme Court denied 5-4, in Trump v. Cook, No. 25A312, the government’s application to stay the preliminary injunction that has kept Governor Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors since President Trump’s attempted removal of her in August 2025.¹ Writing for the majority — joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh and Jackson — Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the government’s position “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.”² Justice Thomas called the ruling “incorrect”: “Although the Court expresses concern that the President removed a Board member for ‘the first time in the Federal Reserve’s 111-year history,’” he wrote, “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.” Justice Alito filed a dissent joined by Justice Gorsuch, and Justice Barrett dissented separately.² The decision issued the same day the Court overruled Humphrey’s Executor for the Federal Trade Commission in Supreme Court overrules Humphrey’s Executor in Trump v. Slaughter, whose majority opinion expressly reserved the Federal Reserve’s “distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States”; the two rulings together leave the President with at-will removal over the multi-member regulatory commissions while the central bank’s monetary-policy tenure protection stands.³ President Trump’s August 2025 removal letter — posted in screenshots to Truth Social — alleged that Cook committed mortgage fraud in 2021, before she joined the Board on Senate confirmation in 2022 (she was confirmed to a full fourteen-year term in 2023); Cook denied the allegations as “flimsy,” “unproven” and “conveniently timed following the President’s criticism of the board’s policy decisions.” Judge Jia Cobb of the District of Columbia ordered on 9 September 2025 that Cook remain in office, holding she was “substantially likely” to show the removal violated the Federal Reserve Act’s for-cause requirement — which in Cobb’s reading does not reach conduct predating service — and her procedural due-process rights; a divided D.C. Circuit panel declined to disturb the order; on 1 October 2025 the Supreme Court deferred action on the government’s stay application and set it for argument, which it heard on 21 January 2026.⁴

1. The for-cause protection at issue sits in the Federal Reserve Act at 12 U.S.C. § 242: each Board member “shall hold office for a term of fourteen years from the expiration of the term of his predecessor, unless sooner removed for cause by the President.” Judge Cobb’s reading — that “cause” does not reach conduct predating service, asserted without notice and an opportunity to respond — survives the stay stage under the majority’s likelihood assessment; the merits of Cook’s challenge continue in the district court.⁵

2. Governor Cook’s continued service preserved the Board’s seven-member composition through the Powell-Warsh chair transition (see Powell named Fed Chair pro tempore as Warsh confirmed as successor) and the June FOMC meeting (see FOMC June meeting: Warsh’s first as Chair); Cook said after the ruling that it “recognizes that Federal Reserve independence is essential to fulfilling the congressional mandate of price stability and maximum employment,” per Reuters.⁶

3. The 5-4 lineup inverts the Slaughter coalition: Justice Kavanaugh joined the Slaughter majority overruling Humphrey’s Executor and the Cook majority preserving the Fed’s protection, while Justice Barrett — in the Slaughter majority — dissented in Cook. The paired outcomes make removal doctrine turn on the opinion-level distinction between agencies exercising “executive power” and the central bank’s monetary-policy tradition, a line whose application to the Fed’s supervisory and regulatory functions the Slaughter opinion left open.³²