The Supreme Court’s docket this term continues to feature significant disputes about executive power, as it has in recent years, and Trump v. Cook adds another chapter involving presidential removal authority. This case, which arises on the emergency docket and will be argued tomorrow, concerns President Trump’s decision to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from her position. But notably, it does not present the broader constitutional questions about removal restrictions that the Court has been systematically addressing.
In Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010), the Court struck down dual-layer for-cause removal protections that insulated officers from presidential control. In Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020), the Court invalidated the for-cause protection for the single-director Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reaffirming that significant executive power cannot be wielded by an officer beyond the president’s removal authority. In Collins v. Yellen (2021), the Court extended this reasoning to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s similar structure. And most significantly for this term, Trump v. Slaughter directly challenges the constitutionality of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), which blessed for-cause removal protections for multi-member independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. For nearly ninety years, Humphrey’s Executor has stood as the principal precedent legitimizing vast swaths of the administrative state’s insulation from presidential control, and this term may finally see it reconsidered or overruled.
Yet in Cook, the Trump administration has taken a narrow approach. Rather than challenging the constitutionality of the removal protections that Congress has established for Federal Reserve governors, the administration argues simply that it had sufficient cause to remove Governor Cook under the existing statutory framework.
The president may dismiss governors only “for cause” under 12 U.S.C. § 242. The statute does not define what constitutes such cause, leaving courts to determine whether the president’s stated reasons satisfy this standard. The administration’s stated cause for Cook’s removal centers on allegedly contradictory statements she made on mortgage agreements a short time apart, though prior to her appointment. President Trump’s letter to Cook notifying her of her removal accused her of “deceitful and potentially criminal conduct”—or “[a]t a minimum,” conduct exhibiting “gross negligence in financial transactions.”
The D.C. district court reinstated Cook by a preliminary injunction, finding that pre-appointment misconduct allegations were likely insufficiently related to a Federal Reserve governor’s responsibilities to constitute cause and weighing irreparable harm and the balance of equities in favor of Cook and the Federal Reserve’s independent status. It additionally found that she likely had a procedural due process claim based on a protected property interest in her “for cause”–protected position. A D.C. Circuit panel refused to stay that order, over the dissent of Judge Greg Katsas.
The district court’s conception of permissible grounds of “for cause” removal seems contrived. The “for cause” language leaves the president more removal authority than other statutes that invoke “good cause” or “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” sometimes abbreviated by commentators as “INM.” The Supreme Court recognized that in Collins. Katsas made the same point in his Cook dissent, analyzing the meaning of “for cause” at the time the underlying statute was enacted in 1935 and contrasting that with the INM requirement involved in Humphrey’s Executor. For that ordinary meaning, Katsas invoked Black’s Law Dictionary’s definition—“some cause relating to the conduct, ability, fitness, or competence of the officer.” And invoking “commonsense intuition,” Katsas maintained that a principal officer like Cook does not have a “property interest” in wielding her governmental power.
At this stage of litigation, those issues will likely receive attention as the Court considers Cook’s likelihood of success on the merits. So will the administration’s argument that it faces irreparable harm from being forced to retain a Federal Reserve governor it contends made material misrepresentations. Cook, for her part, contends that disrupting the status quo—she has continued to perform her duties as her case is litigated—would cause grave harm to the economy and to the Federal Reserve’s institutional independence.
The Court has recognized the distinctiveness of the institution involved: “The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,” observed the Court’s order staying the reinstatement of a National Labor Relations Board commissioner and Merit Systems Protection Board member in Trump v. Wilcox (2025). In a footnote, the Court’s decision in Seila Law put the CFPB “in an entirely different league” from the Federal Reserve when noting claims to the central bank’s “special historical status.” Justice Alito dedicated a footnote in his dissent in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America (2024) to explaining the Federal Reserve as “a unique institution with a unique historical background” going back to “the creation and demise of the First and Second Banks of the United States.” The structure of the Federal Reserve enacted in 1913, he continued, “represented an intensely-bargained compromise between two insistent and influential camps: those who wanted a largely private system, and those who favored a Government-controlled national bank.”
Whether and how much that distinctiveness translates to independence that would limit presidential control under the Constitution is a fascinating question. But however much it may make an appearance in oral argument, Trump v. Cook is not cued up for the Court to offer an answer. Still, even preliminary indications from the Court on the statutory breadth of “for cause” removability could offer an informative addition to the body of case law in which the justices reject unaccountable bureaucratic power.