The ruling came one day before the central bank’s rate-setting meeting begins.
A panel of federal judges on Monday held that President Donald Trump cannot fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook as of now, allowing Cook to participate in an important two-day meeting, starting Tuesday, on whether to lower federal interest rates.
The order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a federal appeals court, struck down Trump’s emergency bid to set aside a preliminary ruling by a lower court that barred him from removing Cook, pending the outcome of Cook’s lawsuit against the government challenging her removal.
The government “failed to provide Cook even minimal process—that is, notice of the allegation against her and a meaningful opportunity to respond—before she was purportedly removed,” Circuit Judge Bradley Garcia wrote in the Court’s Monday opinion, affirming the lower court’s decision that temporarily blocked Trump’s removal of Cook pending the outcome of litigation between the president and the Fed governor.
Judge J. Michelle Childs agreed with Garcia. The third judge, Gregory Katsas, said in a dissenting statement that he would have granted the president’s request.
The appeals court hinged its decision on the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which guarantees the rights of citizens against government removal of their property interests without the due process of law.
Because Cook has a property interest in her position, the Court wrote, and the government had not provided her with advanced notice before removing her, Trump cannot remove her pending the outcome of that lawsuit.
By Gary Bai
