Trump Is Calling the Supreme Court’s Bluff on the Fed

Cook, for her part, said that she would not step down. “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so,” she said. “I will not resign.” Her lawyer Abbe Lowell said they would file a lawsuit to challenge the move. “President Trump has no authority to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook,” he said in a statement to reporters. “His attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis.”

All other things being equal, Cook has a strong hand to play. Black-letter federal law—the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, of all things—protects her from at-will removal. In a landmark 1935 case known as Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the for-cause removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission. Because the agency had a multi-member board and exercised “quasi-legislative” and “quasi-judicial power,” the court reasoned, Congress could protect its leadership from dismissal without violating the separation of powers.

In the Roberts Court, however, things are far from equal. The conservative legal establishment has long chafed at Humphrey’s Executor and sought its demise. They prefer a much more rigid separation of powers than the Framers intended, with the president wielding absolute control over the executive branch and the legislative and judicial branches watching from the sidelines.