{"id":2480,"date":"2026-06-30T10:08:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T10:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=2480"},"modified":"2026-06-30T10:08:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T10:08:05","slug":"an-important-but-not-final-victory-at-the-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=2480","title":{"rendered":"An important \u2014 but not final \u2014 victory at the Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Federal Reserve, under pressure from President Donald Trump to cut interest rates and bend to his will, just got an important assist from the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>

Read more Elections have consequences: Endangered Republican turns tail on Trump<\/a><\/p>

In , the justices took up the case involving Trump\u2019s decision to terminate Lisa Cook, a member of the powerful policymaking Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. On June 29, 2026, Cook and the Fed prevailed. In a 5-4 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court upheld a lower court\u2019s decision to while her case proceeds on whether she was terminated \u201cfor cause.\u201d <\/p>

The high court also held that Trump didn\u2019t meet the due process requirements for dismissing a board governor when he \u201cfired\u201d her via a social media post. Trump claimed Cook had committed mortgage fraud, even though she had not been found guilty of any wrongdoing.<\/p>

As a scholar of employment law, I had expected the court to side with Cook to some degree. But other recent Supreme Court cases have gone the other way, protecting the president\u2019s authority to fire other high-level government officials at will.<\/p>

Same court, different opinions<\/strong><\/p>

The court\u2019s Cook decision and its constraints on presidential power stand in contrast to its rulings regarding other federal agencies. On the same day, the conservative majority sided with Trump when that a \u201cfor cause\u201d provision limiting his right to fire the head of the Federal Trade Commission was unconstitutional. <\/p>

In earlier rulings, the court similarly affirmed a president\u2019s right to fire leadership at the and the .<\/p>

As I\u2019ve previously written, it\u2019s important to remember that a of U.S. workers are employed at will, which means they can be fired for any reason and terminated from their jobs with no advance notice. By contrast, Cook\u2019s position is covered by the Federal Reserve Act, which states that board members are appointed by the president to 14-year terms. They can be terminated by the president, but only for cause.<\/p>

The same was true, however, at the Federal Trade Commission, where agency heads can be terminated only for cause. But in the Slaughter case, the conservative majority deemed the cause provision unconstitutional. <\/p>

In Cook\u2019s case, the government didn\u2019t try to argue that the \u201ccause\u201d provision was unconstitutional. It waived that argument early on in the case. However, in upholding the lower court ruling in Cook, the court more or less assumed that the cause provision in the Federal Reserve Act is valid.<\/p>

How to make sense of this contradiction?<\/p>

As Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted in a , the majority opinion in Cook was \u201cin serious tension\u201d with Slaughter. She also criticized the majority opinion for addressing \u201ca constitutional issue\u201d that was \u201coutside the scope of this case.\u201d <\/p>

Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a similar point in her dissent in Trump v. Slaughter, characterizing the majority\u2019s treatment of the Fed as an \u201cad hoc \u2026 exception\u201d to the court\u2019s \u201ctotalizing\u201d and \u201chalf-baked\u201d interpretation of presidential power. Sotomayor noted that Slaughter creates \u201cline-drawing\u201d problems that were previously absent under long-standing precedent protecting FTC agency heads from dismissal.<\/p>

Read more Trump \u2018completely livid\u2019 over mail-in ballot decision<\/a><\/p>

When facts matter as much as the law<\/h2>

It\u2019s difficult to reconcile the two cases based on legal reasoning alone. That doesn\u2019t necessarily make the outcome wrong. But it does suggest it\u2019s important to consider other factors at play \u2013 namely, what\u2019s happening out in the real world, beyond the courthouse. This interpretation of the law is known as \u201clegal realism.\u201d <\/p>

Legal realism dates back to the 1930s, based on the commonsense critique that predictions about the law require some incorporation of the facts rather than purely abstract notions of legal rights. <\/p>

Legal realism extends beyond the idea that a judge\u2019s political ideology might influence outcomes, which is today a common basis for pundits to explain court decisions. Instead, legal realism acknowledges that facts on the ground sometimes matter more than the law.<\/p>

Legal realism is useful here because there\u2019s one overriding fact that makes Cook\u2019s case distinct from the others involving presidential power over federal agencies. Simply put, the Fed is special. It preserves price stability and safeguards the economy as a whole over the long term by rescuing it in bad times and preventing it from overheating in good times. Former Fed Chair Jerome Powell described it as a \u201cfirst responder in times of financial crisis.\u201d<\/p>

But to do its job well, the Fed needs to be insulated from outside political forces. That\u2019s why Wall Street and global markets more broadly were watching the decision closely.<\/p>

The Fed\u2019s unique role<\/strong><\/p>

In Cook, both the majority and concurring opinions frequently referred to the Fed\u2019s vital role in the modern economy. <\/p>

The majority opinion invoked \u201cthe Federal Reserve\u2019s unique historical status and role\u201d and warned of the economic \u201ccalamaties\u201d that would come with \u201cpolitical manipulation of monetary policy.\u201d And Roberts seemed to suggest that the Cook opinion is all the more important in light of the Slaughter ruling, noting the importance of leaving no public \u201cdoubt\u201d as to the independence of \u201cone of our Nation\u2019s (and the world\u2019s) most important financial institutions.\u201d<\/p>

Of the dissenters, only Justice Clarence Thomas took the position that the president should have had the power to fire Cook at will. The rest objected on various technical and procedural grounds.<\/p>

That is, at least by today\u2019s standards, something like a consensus.\n

\"The<\/figure>\n<\/p>

Elizabeth C. Tippett, Professor of Law, University of Oregon<\/em><\/p>

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.<\/p>

Read more Trump insider: The president has thrown the GOP under the bus<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Federal Reserve, under pressure from President Donald Trump to cut interest rates and bend to his will, just got an important assist from the U.S. Supreme Court.In Trump v. 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