Supreme Court bars Trump from immediately firing Fed governor Cook

The US Supreme Court said on Wednesday it will hear arguments in January over Donald Trump’s attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, leaving her in the post for now and teeing up a major legal battle over the first-ever bid by a president to fire a Fed official as he challenges the central bank’s independence.

The justices declined to immediately decide a Justice Department request to put on hold a judge’s order temporarily blocking the Republican president from removing Cook, an appointee of Democratic former president Joe Biden.

It deferred a resolution on that request until the justices have heard the arguments.

In creating the Fed in 1913, Congress passed a law called the Federal Reserve Act that included provisions to shield the central bank from political interference, requiring governors to be removed by a president only “for cause”, though the law does not define the term nor establish procedures for removal. The law has never been tested in court.

Washington-based US District Judge Jia Cobb on September 9 ruled that Trump’s claims that Cook committed mortgage fraud before taking office, which Cook denies, likely were not sufficient grounds for removal under the Federal Reserve Act.

Cook, the first black woman to serve as a Fed governor, sued Trump in August after the president announced he would remove her. Cook has said the claims made by Trump against her did not give the president the legal authority to remove her and were a pretext to fire her for her monetary policy stance.