US Supreme Court rejects Trump’s unprecedented bid to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook

The US Supreme Court refused on Monday to let President Donald Trump ⁠fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook as it stood firm to preserve the central bank’s cherished independence against an unprecedented challenge.

The court, in a 5-4 ruling, blocked Trump’s bid to become the first president to remove a Fed official since Congress created the central bank in 1913. In his second term as president, ⁠Trump has tested the limits of presidential power in numerous other ways as well.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh were in the majority, along with the court’s three liberal justices. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented.

Roberts, who wrote the ruling, said Trump “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”.

Canvassing the history of the Federal Reserve System and its predecessor central banks since the founding, including the Bank of North America and the First and Second Banks of the United States, Roberts emphasised that all have featured independence from the president.

“Like the directors of its three predecessors, however, the Federal Reserve’s Governors do not serve at the president’s pleasure – they instead serve staggered 14 year terms, and may be removed only ‘for cause’,” Roberts wrote.