The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump another key loss on Monday, barring him from firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook for cause.

The high court denied the president’s emergency petition to allow Cook to be fired in the interim while the case proceeds 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the majority opinion.

“Last August, for the first time in the Federal Reserve’s 111-year history, the President attempted to fire one of its Governors,” Roberts wrote. “A few weeks later, a federal court issued an injunction to prevent him from doing so. We decide whether that order should remain in effect pending the conclusion of litigation over the attempted removal.”

In his lengthy opinion, Roberts cited the history of central banks in the United States, including the Federal Reserve, as a rationale for why Fed governors are entitled to removal protections. He ruled that the government appears unlikely to succeed in proving that it has shown proper cause to fire Cook, and said that only Congress could change the standard for a president removing a Fed governor.

“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. The application for a stay is denied.”

Roberts’s majority opinion was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kavanaugh also issued a concurring opinion in which he emphasized that the ruling is only preliminary, that Cook’s fate should be decided in pending litigation, and that the high court has recognized the Federal Reserve has a unique independence that other executive branch agencies do not share. Kavanaugh’s concurrence comes the same day the high court struck down removal protections for the FTC and similar independent agencies in Trump v. Slaughter.

“I would not go down that road. I would not risk destabilizing the U. S. economy just so that we can further mull over an issue that, in various permutations, we have been thinking about for many years,” Kavanaugh wrote. “As the Court’s opinion explains and the Government agrees, the Federal Reserve occupies a unique role in the U. S. Government and maintains critical responsibility for the stability and success of the U. S. and world economies. Most importantly for constitutional purposes, the Federal Reserve follows in a distinct historical tradition of central bank independence that has long coexisted with Article II. That history of course carries great weight in Article II cases.”

“In my view, in light of that historical practice and precedent, the Federal Reserve may continue as an independent agency after Slaughter,” Kavanaugh said. “If the Federal Reserve’s for-cause removal protections are to be eliminated, that change must occur through the legislative process.”

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett each filed their own dissenting opinions, with Justice Neil Gorsuch joining Alito’s dissent.

Thomas took aim in his dissent at the majority choosing to insulate the Federal Reserve from the president, claiming that they make “many policy arguments for an ‘independent’ banking agency that exercises executive power free from accountability, but those are ultimately arguments against the Constitution.”

“Although the Court expresses concern that the President removed a Board member for ‘the first time in the Federal Reserve’s 111-year history,’ it expresses no such concern that it today upholds an injunction against the President’s removal of an executive officer for the first time in the Constitution’s 237-year history,” Thomas wrote.

Alito wrote in his dissenting opinion that he would rule in favor of Trump because he believes the lower court erred in holding that Cook could not be removed for actions predating her time as a Fed governor and that Trump’s bid to remove her did not violate the due process clause. Barrett wrote that she would have ruled in favor of Trump, also expressing concern over the majority giving the Federal Reserve a unique status above the other agencies in the executive branch and agreeing with Alito that their ruling should have been more narrow.

Cook celebrated the Supreme Court’s ruling for preserving the Federal Reserve’s independent status, free from political pressure by a president, and said it is a win that goes beyond her employment at the central bank.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to leave the lower court’s order in place and affirm the need for real process and real cause recognizes that Federal Reserve independence is essential to fulfilling the congressional mandate of price stability and maximum employment,” Cook said. “I am grateful for this decision, not for my own sake, but for the sake of the American people, whose economic well-being depends on a central bank that answers to its mission, not political intimidation. For as long as I serve at the Federal Reserve, I will continue to uphold the principle of political independence in service to all Americans.”

Trump offered an uncharacteristically muted response to the ruling, saying it was decided on a procedural basis and vowing to ensure that “we will take appropriate action immediately to make sure that someone who has committed wrongdoing will not be making vital decisions concerning the Welfare of the United States of America!”

The high court had been asked in the emergency docket case Trump v. Cook to decide whether to pause a lower court’s block on the president’s removal of Cook from the Federal Reserve while litigation in the case continues.

Trump attempted to fire Cook in August 2025, citing allegations by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte that, in 2021, she claimed two different homes as her primary residences to secure more generous loan terms. Pulte referred her to the Justice Department for mortgage fraud. A district court ruled in September that Cook could remain in her post while litigating the firing.

After a federal appeals court declined to pause the district court’s ruling, the Justice Department appealed the matter to the Supreme Court’s emergency docket. Instead of ruling on the emergency petition after receiving filed briefs, the high court made the rare move of scheduling oral arguments in the emergency case. The high court usually does so only in cases it has taken up to decide on the merits.

During oral argument in January, the high court expressed concern over the DOJ’s arguments on what the bar for the “cause” necessary to fire Cook was, fearing the DOJ’s definition could water down removal protections for members of the Fed, essentially making them fireable at will.

The Supreme Court’s ruling marks the latest instance of the high court deciding the scope of the president’s powers, especially over the executive branch. The high court also heard arguments this term in a case over the president’s power to fire independent agencies in the executive branch without cause.