One Live: The Supreme Court on Monday blocked Donald Trump’s attempt to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The five-to-four ruling lets Cook challenge the move and answer Trump’s accusation that she committed mortgage fraud.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Cook deserved a chance to challenge her removal and rebut the accusations. He joined Brett Kavanaugh and the three liberal justices in the majority. That left four justices in dissent, even as the court gave Trump broad room to remove other regulators.
Federal Reserve Board of Governors
On Monday, the court also said that subordinates who exercise the president’s power can be removed by him. That ruling scrapped a nearly 100-year-old precedent tied to the Federal Trade Commission and expanded presidential power over regulators across dozens of key agencies.
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors sat partly outside that sweep. Roberts warned of the calamities that could arise if presidents could impose their will on the central bank. In practical terms, Lisa Cook stays on the board while her challenge moves forward, instead of being pushed out immediately.
Roberts and Kavanaugh
The split is unusual because the same court that widened presidential removal power still protected Cook in this case. Roberts and Kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices to block Trump’s move, making the Federal Reserve question narrower than the broader agency ruling decided the same day.
That distinction matters for Cook’s case: Trump can still press his allegations, but he cannot treat the board seat as empty while the challenge runs. The opinion leaves the next legal step to the removal fight itself, and the record here does not add a new deadline or hearing date.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt precedent
The earlier precedent came from a unanimous ruling nearly 100 years ago involving Franklin Delano Roosevelt and commissioners on regulatory agencies created by Congress. Monday’s decision erased that limit for many agencies, but not for Cook’s immediate position on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
For now, the result is simple: Trump won a broad expansion of presidential removal power, then lost the immediate fight over Lisa Cook. The court gave her the chance to stay in place long enough to answer the charges against her, and that is where the dispute now stands.
