Supreme Court carves out Fed in Trump firing ruling

The Supreme Court let Donald J. Trump remove two independent-agency officials while their lawsuits continued, but it drew a bright line around the Federal Reserve, signaling that the central bank may keep a protected status even as other agencies do not.

In the May 22, 2025, emergency order in Trump v. Wilcox, the justices granted Trump’s stay request and allowed him to oust National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne A. Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris. The majority said the Federal Reserve is a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity” rooted in the historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States. The order also said the case did not necessarily decide the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections for Federal Reserve governors or members of the Federal Open Market Committee.

That language mattered because Wilcox and Harris had argued that the Court’s reasoning could spill over to the Fed and weaken its independence. The majority rejected that warning, preserving a path for Trump to challenge other agencies while carving out the central bank as something different. The result sharpened a doctrine the Court has been building for years: presidential removal power is expanding, but not uniformly.

The case tested Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the 1935 decision that upheld removal limits for Federal Trade Commission commissioners and gave Congress room to insulate certain multimember agencies from direct White House control. The modern conservative Court had already narrowed that idea in Seila Law v. CFPB, which cut back protections for a single-director agency. Even so, the Court continued to treat the Federal Reserve as a possible exception because of its unusual history, funding and structure.

That distinction became more consequential in June 2026, when the Court blocked Trump from immediately firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa D. Cook and kept her in place while her lawsuit moved forward. The action left Trump unable to remove a sitting Fed governor on an emergency basis, even as the Court kept widening presidential authority over other agencies long treated as insulated from politics.

The Fed carve-out also eased concerns in Washington, D.C., and on Wall Street that Trump could try to fire Jerome Powell or pressure the central bank’s rate-setting structure through personnel changes. The Court’s language suggested that any attempt to remove a Fed governor would face a far steeper legal fight than Trump’s successful effort to push out Wilcox and Harris.