U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook at the Brookings Institution on Monday, November 3, 2025 in Washington, DC, USA.
Aaron Schwartz | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it will hear oral arguments on January 21 in a case challenging President Donald Trump’s authority to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
President Trump announced on August 25 that he was firing Cook, one of seven Federal Reserve Board members, over allegations that he committed mortgage fraud related to two homes he owned.
Cook has denied any wrongdoing and has filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against his dismissal.
A federal district court judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in early September that Cook could not be removed as a director while the lawsuit was pending.
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals upheld the decision shortly after, and President Trump asked the Supreme Court to rule on her firing powers.
In his initial decision blocking Cook’s removal, District Court Judge Gia Cobb wrote, “Mr. Cook has made a strong showing that his purported removal occurred in violation of the ’cause’ clause of the Federal Reserve Act.”
Cobb wrote that the “best interpretation” of that provision is that the legal grounds for removing a Fed director are limited to conduct related to “conduct while in office.”
The allegations against Cook relate to conduct before she became a Fed director.
Attorney General D. John Sauer, who is representing the Trump administration in the case, argued in a Supreme Court filing that the president should be allowed to remove her while the case is pending because she does not have a “Fifth Amendment property right to continue serving as Governor of the Federal Reserve.”
Sauer also wrote that while the Federal Reserve Act “prohibits removal for no cause at all or for policy disagreements, the determination of ‘any cause relating to the conduct, ability, suitability, or competency of the officer’ is within the president’s non-reviewable discretion, so long as the president specifies the cause.”
President Trump tried to fire Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s board, after months of unsuccessfully pressuring the board and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to lower interest rates.
