Hello, this is Jeff Barnum reading the Supreme Court syllabus in Trump, President of the United States, versus Cook, member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System et al. on application for stay. Argued January 21, 2026, decided June 29, 2026. In August 2025, President Trump purported to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Cook was the first governor to be fired in the central bank's 111-year history. She promptly filed suit. She alleged that the attempted removal was not for cause, as required by statute, and that the president had, in any event, failed to comply with the statutes and the Constitution's requirement that she receive pre-termination process. The district court issued a preliminary injunction to prevent her removal. This court must decide whether the district court's order should remain in effect pending the conclusion of litigation over the attempted removal. The United States has a long tradition of independent central banking. The nation's first de facto central bank, the Bank of North America, predates even our Constitution. The structure of the Bank of North America was unusual. It was owned in part by the government and in part by the public, run by directors accountable only to private stockholders, and yet tasked with public purposes, specifically the maintenance of a sound national currency. Although the Bank of North America was short-lived, two more national banks soon followed in its footsteps. Both had similar goals to the Bank of North America and a similar degree of independence from the federal government. The first came in 1791, when the first Congress chartered a bank that came to be known as the First Bank of the United States. After the charter for the first bank was allowed to expire in 1811, Chief Justice Marshall remarked that a short experience of the embarrassments to which the refusal to revive the first bank exposed the government, severe financial instability following the War of 1812, convinced those who were most prejudiced against a central bank of the measure of its necessity. That necessity led to the Second Bank of the United States, chartered in 1816. In 1832, however, President Jackson, unconvinced of the wisdom of an independent national bank, vetoed a bill passed by Congress to extend the Second Bank's charter. Eighty years later, after an era of ruinous financial panics, a bipartisan Congressional Commission recommended the creation of another central bank to assume the serious duty of protecting public and private interests at times when they are imperiled. What emerged is today's central bank called the Federal Reserve System, first created in 1913 and then restructured in 1933 and 1935. Federal Reserve consists of 12 independent but affiliated banks, one for each region. These regional banks, called Federal Reserve Banks, are privately owned and operated by the commercial banks of the area. Above those banks sits the Board of Governors, which supervises the system with an eye to the economy's long-run growth. The board consists of seven members, each appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Like the directors of its three predecessors, the Federal Reserve governors do not serve at the President's pleasure. They instead serve staggered 14-year terms and may be removed only for cause. Cook's term on the board was set to expire in 2038. On August 20, 2025, the Federal Housing Finance Agency's director posted to social media a letter in which he accused Cook of mortgage fraud. President Trump posted to social media that Cook must resign now, and he later told reporters that he would fire her if she didn't resign. Three days later, the president purported to fire Cook for cause. In a letter to Cook, he stated that he had reason to believe that she may have made false statements on one or more mortgage agreements. He told her that he lacked confidence in her integrity and that he had determined that faithfully executing the law requires her immediate removal from office. After Cook filed suit, the district court issued a preliminary injunction to prevent her removal. The Court of Appeals declined to stay the injunction, and the government filed an application for stay in this court. Held. The government has not shown that it is likely to prevail on the legal arguments advanced in its stay application. Acceptance of the government's position would in effect transform the Federal Reserve's for-cause protection into at all employment, an interpretive leap out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our nation's tradition of central banking protected from political interference. The government first contends that the president's determination of cause is wholly unreviewable because the statute commits the determination of cause to the president alone. The court sees no such commitment. Whether a governor should be removed for cause is a decision only the president can make, short of impeachment. But that does not mean that he may make the decision for any reason or no reason. Even when a statute delegates discretionary authority to the executive branch, a court must independently interpret the statute and effectuate the will of Congress subject to constitutional limits. As the government eventually acknowledges, it falls to the courts to discern the boundaries of the president's power under the Federal Reserve Act. Unlike the government, the court sees no indication that the common law forecloses all judicial review of removals. The cases the government cites for its contrary view are distinguishable because they address statutes that specified not only causes for removal, but also procedures for removal, which the reviewing courts interpreted to be exclusive. Even if the president's determination is judicially reviewable, the government contends cause sets a very low bar, one that the president easily cleared. Cook, by contrast, argues that cause sets a very high bar that the president failed to meet. The court rejects both parties' positions. Congress enacted the statute against the backdrop of the common law, such that the court must look to the common law to decipher what cause a term of art requires. For present purposes, it is sufficient to observe that any definition of cause in this context must reflect the Federal Reserve's unique historical status and role. Like its predecessors, the Federal Reserve operates at a deliberate remove from the ordinary political process, including a budget free of congressional control and policies set not only by governors, but also by representative of the private regional banks. Not only the fact of independence, but also the appearance of independence is key to the Federal Reserve's design. That councils a substantial threshold for cause. Whether cause for removal exists in any given situation will depend, at least in part, on the seriousness of the alleged misconduct and the extent of any nexus that may exist to the governor's professional duties. The key issue is whether the cause assigned truly implies an unfitness for the place, or whether it simply represents an effort to secure a more congenial replacement. Without such constraints in place, any perceived or alleged misstep, past or present, could provide a ready pretext for a governor's removal, a fact that he would surely know, and that would surely weigh on him as he decided what to say and how to vote. Nothing could be more corrosive of the independence that Congress sought to preserve. The court rejects the government's contention that federal courts cannot grant a preliminary injunction ordering reinstatement during the pendency of litigation. Historically, a court of equity could not finally determine whether a plaintiff was validly removed. That was a question only a court of law could settle by quo waranto or mandamus. In the meantime, however, equity could ensure that the actual incumbents of an office may be protected, pending a contest as to their title from interference with their possession and with the exercise of their functions, at least to the extent that they had a likely meritorious claim. The district court sought to do just that here. The court decides this application on the narrow ground that the president failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which he was entitled by statute. Without such protections, she could not properly dispute the charges the president laid against her. The court need not address Cook's constitutional due process argument, for the statute alone makes it unlikely that the government will prevail on appeal as to the validity of the procedures used to fire Cook. Under the court's precedence, Cook was entitled to notice and some opportunity to respond before her termination. When Congress created the Federal Reserve, it gave governors a set term in office and permitted removal only for cause. That form of tenure, a term of years limited only by removal for cause, carried with it a settled interpretation at common law, one that the court has expressly adopted just a decade before. The rule the court explained in 1901 is that notice and hearing are essential before an officer's removal, where the term of office is for a fixed period. Reagan v. United States, 182 U.S. 419, a Supreme Court case from 1901. See also Shirtleff v. United States 189 U.S. 311, a Supreme Court case from 1903. Reagan and Shirtleff established the baseline against which Congress legislated, and the court must construe its work accordingly. That is not to say that a Federal Reserve governor is entitled to a full-blown judicial trial. All that is required is the right to support his allegation by argument, however brief, and if need be by proof, however informal, before a final decision is made. The protection from removal enjoyed by governors of the Federal Reserve is consistent with the Constitution. The founders knew from experience the calamities that could arise from even the suspicion of political manipulation of monetary policy. So when they established the first bank of the United States, they guaranteed its independence from presidential control, and their successors did the same for the second bank. That enabled both banks to serve as the great regulating wheel of the early American financial system. The Federal Reserve follows in this tradition, with a similar degree of independence from presidential control. What matters is that the Federal Reserve remains consistent with the principles that underpin the first and second banks, namely, monetary policy should not be subject to political interference. In the court's view, the Federal Reserve maintains the balance struck by the founding generation under modern circumstances. Although this extraordinary case arises on the court's interim docket, the court has had the benefit of not only a Miki and oral argument, but months of internal consultation and deliberation. The court declines to sow doubt as to the status of one of the nation's and the world's most important financial institutions, and would not so quickly unsettle this special arrangement sanctioned by history. The court rejects the government's half-hearted contention that Cook in fact received due process. At minimum, Cook was entitled to some explanation of the evidence at issue, some avenue for a response, and a deadline by which a response would be due. Only after Cook has had the opportunity to respond to the charges made against her may a final decision be made, and only then can the courts assess the validity and sufficiency of such charges. Application for stay denied. Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the court, in which Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Jackson joined. Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Jackson filed concurring opinions. Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion. Justice Alito filed a dissenting opinion in which Justice Korsuch joined. Justice Barrett filed a dissenting opinion. Thank you for listening. Please rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure you subscribe so you can get all of the OT 25 decisions, the few that are left, automatically delivered to your device. If you wish to communicate with the podcast, please email us at scoddecisions at gmail.com or click the link in the show notes. Thanks, and I hope you have a great day.