On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook can remain in her post while she challenges President Trump's attempt to fire her. Trump announced Cook's removal on social media in August 2025, citing allegations by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte that she had claimed two homes as her primary residence on 2021 mortgages. Cook denies wrongdoing, has not been charged, and sued, arguing she could not be removed without cause.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a majority that included Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The Court decided “on the narrow ground that the president failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which she was entitled by statute. Without such protections, she could not properly dispute the charges the president laid against her.” Roberts wrote that allowing a firing without proper process would be “corrosive of the independence” of the Fed, but also that “the ultimate question of whether the President can remove Cook for cause will depend in part on the underlying facts.”
The same day, in a 6-3 decision, the Court upheld Trump's firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and overruled Humphrey's Executor, the 1935 precedent that protected members of independent agencies from removal without cause, while citing the Fed's Board of Governors as an office that does not necessarily carry executive power (see The Supreme Court Lets Trump Fire Independent-Agency Members at Will, Overruling a 90-Year Precedent in a 6-3 Decision). The Guardian called the Cook decision a major win for the central bank.
Cook, a Biden appointee whose 14-year term runs to 2038, is the first Black woman to serve on the Fed board. The case unfolded as Trump attacked the Fed for holding interest rates at levels he considered too high.
Update (October 2, 2026): In August, the White House sent Cook a letter saying Trump was “considering removing” her over the same mortgage allegations and asked for a written response within three weeks, ABC News first reported. Her lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, called the allegations “as baseless now as they were a year ago” and said, “As we did before, we will challenge this latest pretext and preserve her position and the historic role of the Fed.”
Correction (October 2, 2026): This entry said the Court let Trump “overturn Humphrey's Executor”; the Court itself overruled that precedent. It also presented the June 29 decision as a final ruling against the firing; it lets Cook stay while her lawsuit proceeds, and the Court said Trump may still try to remove her for cause after proper process. Source descriptions were corrected to the articles' published headlines.