The US Supreme Court has drawn a new line between presidential control of independent agencies and the historic insulation of the Federal Reserve, ruling Monday in Trump v. Cook that Donald Trump cannot remove Fed governor Lisa Cook while litigation over her firing continues, even as the same court cleared the way in a companion case for him to fire Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter without cause.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 5-4 majority opinion blocking Cook’s removal, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson; Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented.
The opinion held that letting Trump remove Cook now “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,” and would “turn for-cause protection into little more than at-will employment.”
Roberts noted in a footnote that nothing stops Trump from attempting the firing again provided Cook receives proper notice and a chance to respond.
In the separate 6-3 Slaughter ruling, Roberts wrote that “subordinates who exercise the president’s power are subject to removal by him,” overturning a 90-year-old precedent that had shielded FTC commissioners and similar agency heads from at-will dismissal. Sotomayor, dissenting in that case, warned the decision could lead to “submission, instability, and even oppression.”
Lisa Cook, the first African American woman to serve on the Fed’s Board of Governors, was first targeted for removal last August after Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte alleged mortgage fraud; Cook has denied the allegations and has not been charged. Trump posted on Truth Social that he would “take appropriate action immediately” to remove her again.
The ruling follows the Justice Department’s earlier decision to drop a separate investigation into then-Fed chair Jerome Powell over renovation cost overruns, after a Republican senator threatened to block Kevin Warsh’s confirmation as Fed chair pending that probe’s closure; Warsh has since been confirmed, with Powell remaining on the board until his term expires in 2028.
For in-house counsel and compliance teams at regulated entities, the ruling confirms that for-cause removal protections are not uniform across federal agencies: the Fed retains a narrow, Roberts-described exception rooted in its “unique historical status,” while the FTC, and by extension agencies including the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board, do not.
Practitioners advising clients before independent agencies should reassess leadership-stability risk in light of the court’s narrower reading of removal protections outside the Fed’s carve-out. Roberts’s footnote means Trump can try firing Cook a second time, so long as he gives her formal notice and a chance to respond — a bar the White House cleared by Truth Social post last August and may not clear again.