Trump firing of Fed’s Lisa Cook case set for January
U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, USA, on Monday, November 3, 2025.
Aaron Schwartz | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Supreme Court says it will hear Wednesday verbal arguments The lawsuit challenges President Donald Trump’s authority to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook on Jan. 21.
Trump announced on August 25 that he had fired Cook, one of seven Fed governors, citing allegations of mortgage fraud regarding two residences he owned.
Cook, who has denied any wrongdoing, filed a lawsuit seeking to block his removal.
A federal district court judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in early September that Cook could not be fired from the board while his case was pending.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals soon upheld that decision, prompting Trump to ask the Supreme Court to rule on its authority to fire him.
In the initial ruling blocking Cook’s removal, District Court Judge Jia Cobb wrote: “Cook has made a strong showing that his purported removal was done in violation of the ‘for cause’ provision of the Federal Reserve Act.”
Cobb wrote that the “best reading” of this provision is that the legal basis for removing a Fed chair is limited to actions related to his or her “conduct in office.”
The allegations against Cook relate to his behavior before his tenure at the Fed.
Attorney General D. John Sauer, who is representing the Trump administration in the case, argued in a filing to the Supreme Court that the president should be allowed to remove himself from office while his case is pending because he does not have “Fifth Amendment property rights in his continued service as Administrator of the Federal Reserve System.”
Sauer also wrote that although the Federal Reserve Act prohibits removal “for no reason or because of policy disagreement… so long as the President determines cause, the determination of ‘some cause relating to the officer’s conduct, ability, fitness, or competence’ is within the President’s non-reviewable discretion.”
Trump tried to fire Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed Board, after months of unsuccessful pressure on the board and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut interest rates.
