Trump v. Cook
Key claim: The Supreme Court ruled that President Trump cannot fire a Federal Reserve Governor without genuine legal cause, and that courts have the authority to review whether that cause is real — keeping Lisa Cook in her position while litigation continues.
Abstract
U.S. Supreme Court opinion decided 2026-06-29, by John G. Roberts. (Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2025 1
Syllabus
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES v. COOK, MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, ET AL.
ON APPLICATION FOR STAY
No. 25A312. Argued January 21, 2026—Decided June 29, 2026
In August 2025, President Trump purported to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Cook was the first Governor to be fired in the central bank’s 111-year history. She promptly filed suit. She alleged that the attempted removal was not “for cause,” as required by statute, and that the President had in any event failed to comply with the statute’s (and the Constitution’s) requirement that she receive pretermination process. The District Court issued a preliminary injunction to prevent her removal. This Court must decide whether the District Court’s order should remain in effect pending the conclusion of litigation over the attempted removal. The United States has a long tradition of independent central bank- ing. The Nation’s first de facto central bank, the Bank of North Amer- ica, predates even our Constitution. The structure of the Bank of North America was unusual; it was owned in part by the Government and in part by the public, run by directors accountable only to private stockholders, and yet tasked with public purposes—specifically, the maintenance of a sound national currency. Although the Bank of North America was short lived, two more na- tional banks soon followed in its footsteps. Both had similar goals to the Bank of North America—and a similar degree of independence from the Federal Government. The first came in 1791, when the First Congress chartered a bank that came to be known as the First Bank of the United States. After the charter for the First Bank was allowed to expire in 1811, Chief Justice Marshall remarked that “a short expe- rience of the embarrassments to which the refusal to revive [the First Bank] exposed the government”—severe financial instability following 2 TRUMP v. COOK
Syllabus
the War of 1812—“convinced those who were most prejudiced against
[a central bank] of the measure of its necessity.” McCulloch v. Mary-
land, 4 Wheat. 316, 402. That necessity led to the Second Bank of the
United States, chartered in 1816. In 1832, however, President Jack-
son, unconvinced of the wisdom of an independent national bank, ve-
toed a bill passed by Congress to extend the Second Bank’s charter.
Eighty years later, after an era of ruinous financial panics, a bipar-
tisan congressional commission recommended the creation of another
central bank to assume “the serious duty of protecting public and pri-
vate interests at times when they are imperiled.” Report of the Na-
tional Monetary Commission, S. Doc. No. 243, 62d Cong., 2d Sess., 36.
What emerged is today’s central bank—called the Federal Reserve
System—first created in 1913, and then restructured in 1933 and
1935. The Federal Reserve consists of 12 “independent but affiliated
banks,” one for each region. C. Glass, An Adventure in Constructive
Finance 173. These regional banks, called Federal Reserve Banks, are
privately owned (and operated) by the commercial banks of the area.
See 38 Stat. 254, 12 U. S. C. §341. Above those banks sits the Board
of Governors, which supervises the system with an eye to the econ-
omy’s “long run growth.” §225a. The Board consists of seven members,
each appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. §241.
Like the directors of its three predecessors, the Federal Reserve’s Gov-
ernors do not serve at the President’s pleasure—they instead serve
staggered 14-year terms, and may be removed only “for cause.” §242.
Cook’s term on the Board of Governors was set to expire in 2038. On
August 20, 2025, the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Director
posted to social media a letter in which he accused Cook of mortgage
fraud. President Trump posted to social media that “Cook must resign,
now!!!” and he later told reporters that he would “fire her if she doesn’t
resign.” Complaint in No. 1:25-cv-02903 (D DC), ECF Doc. 1, p. 14.
Three days later, the President purported to fire Cook for cause. In a
letter to Cook, he stated that he had “reason to believe” that she “may
have made false statements on one or more mortgage agreements.”
ECF Doc. 1–4, p. 2. He told her that he lacked “confidence in [her]
integrity” and that he had determined that “faithfully executing the
law requires [her] immediate removal from office.” Id., at 3. After
Cook filed suit, the District Court issued a preliminary injunction to
prevent her removal. The Court of Appeals declined to stay the injunc-
tion, and the Government filed an application for stay in this Court.
Held: The Government’s application is denied. Pp. 8–27. (a) The Government has not shown that it is likely to prevail on the legal arguments advanced in its stay application. See Hollingsworth v. Perry, 558 U. S. 183, 190 (per curiam); Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 434. Acceptance of the Government’s position would in effect Cite as: 609 U. S. ___ (2026) 3
Syllabus
transform the Federal Reserve’s for-cause protection into at-will em- ployment—an interpretive leap out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our Nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference. Pp. 8–16. (1) The Government first contends that the President’s determi- nation of “cause” is wholly unreviewable because the statute “commits the determination of cause to” the President alone. Application 20. The Court sees no such commitment. Whether a Governor should be “removed for cause” is a decision only the President can make (short of impeachment). 12 U. S. C. §242. But that does not mean that he may make that decision for any reason, or no reason. Even when a statute “delegates discretionary authority” to the Executive Branch, a court must “independently interpret the statute and effectuate the will of Congress subject to constitutional limits.” Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U. S. 369, 395. As the Government eventually acknowledges, it falls to the courts to “discern the boundaries of the President’s power” under the Federal Reserve Act. Supp. Brief for Ap- plicant 13 (internal quotation marks omitted). Unlike the Government, the Court sees no indication that the com- mon law forecloses all judicial review of removals. See State ex rel. Hart v. Common Council of City of Duluth, 53 Minn. 238, 244, 55 N. W. 118, 120 (“The sufficiency and reasonableness of the cause of removal are questions for the courts. . . . This has been the settled law ever since Bagg’s Case, [11 Co. Rep. 93b, 77 Eng. Rep. 1271 (K. B. 1615) (Coke, C. J.)], and we are not aware of any respectable authority to the contrary.”). The cases the Government cites for its contrary view are distinguishable because they addressed statutes that specified not only causes for removal but also procedures for removal, which the re- viewing courts interpreted to be exclusive. Pp. 9–11. (
Why this matters
Trump v. Cook is the first Supreme Court case to directly address whether the President may remove a Federal Reserve Governor, testing tenure protections that have long insulated monetary-policy officials from at-will dismissal. For civil rights and due-process purposes, the decision will shape what process is owed to tenure-protected federal officers and, more broadly, whether independent agencies retain structural insulation from presidential control — a question with downstream effects on the impartiality of federal regulators affecting protected groups.