Two more Supreme Court opinions. One is Trump v. Cook and the other is Trump v. Slaughter.
Reporting from SCOTUSBlog:
For Trump v. Cook:
In Trump v. Cook, the vote is 5-4. Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Jackson join the chief justice.
At issue in this case is the Trump administration’s efforts to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, based on allegations of mortgage fraud (which she strenuously disputes). The lower courts required Trump to allow Cook to stay at the Fed while litigation continued, and the Supreme Court heard argument in January on whether to pause the lower court’s decision.
The court today turns down the government's request to pause the lower court's decision -- e.g., Lisa Cook can continue to stay in office while the litigation continues.
Thomas has a dissenting opinion; Alito has a dissenting opinion joined by Gorsuch; Barrett also has a dissenting opinion.
"To accept any one of [the Trump administration's arguments would in effect transform the Federal Reserve’s for-cause protection into at-will employment—an interpretive leap out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our Nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference. We therefore deny the Government’s application."
"Having rejected the Government's view that the courts are to play no role in assessing the validity of a Governor's removal, we may decide this application on narrow grounds. No matter the precise definition of cause, or the scope of our review of any such determination, the President failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which she was entitled by statute."
For Trump v. Slaughter:
This was Rebecca Slaughter’s challenge to her removal from her position as a member of the Federal Trade Commission. Under federal law, the president could only remove her for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” but he did not cite any of the grounds in firing her. The lower courts ordered Trump to reinstate Slaughter. They pointed to Humphrey’s Executor, a 1935 case in which the Supreme Court had upheld the FTC’s removal provision.
The court in Slaughter holds that the "for cause" removal provision for the FTC is contrary to the Constitution's separation of powers.
The court also overrules Humphrey's Executor.
