President Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud was rejected by the US Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the majority, which included the court’s three liberal members – Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson – plus conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The court’s four other conservative justices dissented.
The court sidestepped the wider issue of whether a president had the right to fire any member of the Fed’s leadership. Instead, the ruling rejected Trump’s effort to stay a lower federal court ruling that blocked Cook’s termination while her lawsuit challenging Trump’s dismissal was still active.
The Federal Reserve Act states that a president can remove a Fed governor only “for cause,” although the definition of that phrase is absent from the law. Cook has not been indicted and denies the mortgage fraud allegations that were generated by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, who issued similar allegations against other political foes of the president.
“To be clear, the ultimate question of whether the President can remove Cook for cause will depend in part on the underlying facts,” Roberts wrote. “In this opinion, we have not addressed the facts, as they have yet to be found or analyzed under the relevant legal standards. Rather, we have simply addressed the parties’ arguments about the appropriate legal standards under which the facts must be evaluated.”
Neither the White House, Pulte, nor Cook issued an immediate comment on the ruling.
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