Justice Sonia Sotomayor summed up Wednesday morning’s two-hour oral arguments on whether or not Trump could fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in one line.
“This whole case isn’t regular.”
While Cook’s case isn’t explicitly about the Federal Reserve’s right to freedom from political manipulation, the court’s ruling will have resounding implications for U.S. central bank independence, which has been preserved since the body was created 112 years ago.
Cook’s lawyers’ arguments revolved around two contentions: that Cook wasn’t provided due process between the time members of the Trump administration accused her of criminal mortgage fraud and Trump’s attempt to remove her, and that the standard for “for cause” removal as outlined in the law had not been met. The Trump administration argued the president gave Cook adequate notice in an unconventional way: A Truth Social post.
The justices were skeptical. The elephant in the room, throughout, was how to assess actions by a president who relies on social media to make and announce policy decisions that may, for example, upend international trade, or send the military into cities and states. How much weight can and should courts put on a president’s social media posts as official action?
Cook has denied wrongdoing in this case, and the Trump administration has regularly cooked up unfounded mortgage fraud allegations against the president’s perceived enemies as part of a systematic retribution machine. A lower court and an appeals court stayed the removal until Cook’s case was fully litigated.
Cook’s lawyers hold she wasn’t afforded adequate notice and a hearing, as required by law, before Trump tried to remove her. And on Wednesday, at least some justices seemed to agree.
The case’s irregularity began “starting with the Truth Social notice, or thinking of it as notice at all,” Sotomayor said in the final moments of oral arguments, laughing. The Truth Social post, she said, “certainly didn’t invite an opportunity to be heard.”
A crux of the government’s case, as presented by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, is that Cook did actually receive notice and time to respond via Trump’s prolific Truth Social presence. His post about firing Cook for mortgage fraud and screenshots of alleged evidence posted online launched the five-day period Cook had to respond, Sauer contended. Many of the justices didn’t appear convinced.
When Sauer said the administration had followed the legal process and given Cook sufficient opportunity to state her case in public, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked facetiously if Cook’s own public presentation was to be a social media post. Sauer answered simply: “Yes.”
Moments later, Justice Neil Gorsuch pushed on the government’s argument that the president had to afford Cook only minimal process. How minimal? Sauer reiterated that Trump’s Truth Social post, specifically “the five day window between the Truth Social post and the removal letter,” was enough to inform Cook of the allegations against her.
Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett emphasized at separate times during the proceeding Cook’s right to due process, leading Sauer again and again to restate that Trump’s online behavior was key to the Fed governor’s firing, and add a wrinkle that it’s ultimately up to the president to determine what process is.
It’s a bizarre and almost unserious case with dead serious consequences. Justices on Wednesday contended with the idea that a president who virtually lives online and issues some of his most important pronouncements via the social media platform he owns need only post to that platform to kick off the due process required under law for removing a Federal Reserve governor “for cause.” And even those most amenable to Trump’s executive branch expansion didn’t seem to buy into the philosophy.
Asking whether the mortgage documents that would purportedly reveal any alleged fraud were in the record in this case, conservative Justice Samuel Alito forced Sauer to admit they might not be, instead pointing back to social media.
“I know that the text of the social media post that screenshots the mortgage applications is in the record, but I don’t recall if the paperwork itself is in the District Court’s record,” Sauer said.
The admission led Alito, normally a reliable vote for Trump’s agenda, to concede the administration’s handling of Cook’s case was done so in a “cursory manner.”
The whole case tees up the Supreme Court justices to come face-to-face with the contradiction they created, holding Trump had the right to fire officers from independent agencies including the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Federal Trade Commission, but maybe not from another, extremely important independent agency: the Federal Reserve. The Fed, some justices have opined in other independent agency cases, is a unique entity shielded from presidential overreach because of its historical background and monetary policy role.
Experts told TPM it’s a tough needle to thread, given the Court’s 2025 agency rulings.