Main: President Donald Trump addresses the press after the White House Easter Egg Roll in Washington, D.C., on April 21, 2025 (Photo by Andrew Leyden/NurPhoto via AP). Left inset: Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at an event at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025 (AP Photo/Eric Gay). Right inset: Board of Governors member Lisa Cook, right, attends an open meeting of the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve, June 25, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File).
In a recent Supreme Court decision, Governor Lisa Cook of the Federal Reserve received another legal reprieve from her dismissal by President Donald Trump. However, Justice Amy Coney Barrett expressed support for a ruling that would have resulted in Cook’s immediate removal from office.
The 5-4 ruling on Monday saw Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the court’s liberal justices joining forces to uphold the Federal Reserve’s distinctive independence and historical significance. This decision temporarily prevents Trump’s attempt to fire Cook over unadjudicated mortgage fraud allegations.
Chief Justice Roberts stressed the importance of maintaining stability in one of the world’s leading financial institutions. He acknowledged differing viewpoints but asserted that disrupting these long-standing arrangements would be premature, pending resolution of specific “factual issues” related to the allegations and their compliance with the “for cause” standard.
Last year, Bill Pulte, Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, filed a criminal referral against Cook, accusing her of falsifying bank documents and property records to secure favorable loan terms before her Federal Reserve appointment. President Trump later referenced this accusation as justification for her dismissal while advocating for lower interest rates at the Federal Reserve.
“That will not do,” the majority opinion said, concluding that Cook was “entitled to notice” beyond a Truth Social post and letter, plus “some opportunity to respond before her termination.”
During oral arguments, Kavanaugh led the charge in warning about the “what goes around comes around” consequences of embracing a framework where a president can remove Federal Reserve members on a whim and for political reasons. Trump has since installed Pulte as the acting director of national intelligence.
In his Monday concurrence, Kavanaugh emphasized that the “interim ruling does not decide whether the President may lawfully remove Governor Cook for cause.”
“The ultimate decision about whether the President may remove Governor Cook for cause will largely depend on the facts regarding the Governor’s actions. And those facts have yet to be determined,” he said, while at the same time standing up in the meantime for the “longstanding historical practice and understanding that the Federal Reserve is an independent agency whose Governors enjoy for-cause removal protection consistent with Article II of the Constitution.”
Notably, the majority opinion took time to respond to Barrett’s solo dissent at length, downplaying her “fears” that the district court’s injunction, as it currently exists, bars a mortgage fraud-based firing of Cook “no matter what.”
“Neither party agrees, and neither do we,” a footnote said. “Like the parties, we read the injunction to forbid the implementation of ‘the President’s letter of August 25’ in which he purported to fire Cook—but not to forbid the President from trying again, if he chooses to do so.”
The effect of ruling Barrett’s way, the majority explained, would be “granting the Government’s application in full, and thus removing Cook from office immediately, as opposed to merely clarifying the injunction’s limited scope.”
To hear Barrett tell it, however, there’s a “disconnect” between the removal bar and the majority’s “try again” suggestion. It’s simply true that Trump has “no way to remove Cook for her alleged mortgage fraud” right now, she said.
“Putting aside my difficulties with the opinion’s scope, there is a disconnect between its holding and its disposition line. The Court does not rule out mortgage fraud as sufficient cause for removal under §242; instead, it denies a stay on the ‘narrow groun[d]’ that the President has not yet provided Cook enough process. The President remains free to ‘tr[y] again,’ the Court says, so long as he gives Cook proper notice and an opportunity to respond,” Barrett wrote. “But if the Court wanted to leave the President in that position, it should not have denied the stay.”
“Under our precedent, that significant interference with the President’s removal authority clears the ‘irreparable harm’ threshold,” she added later.