Supreme Court Hands Trump Historic Victory on Firing Power, Defends Fed Governor Cook
A Landmark Expansion of Presidential Firing Power
In a pair of sweeping decisions issued Monday, the Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory by overturning the 1935 precedent that has protected hundreds of independent federal agency officials from presidential removal for nearly a century. By a 6-3 ideological split in Trump v. United States, the justices eliminated the constraints of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, freeing the president to dismiss the heads of agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board without cause. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito argued that Article II of the Constitution grants the president unitary executive authority, and that the separation of powers requires the chief executive to have full control over subordinate officers. The ruling drew immediate alarm from critics who warned it would gut the independence of agencies created by Congress to act as neutral arbiters of economic and regulatory policy.
The decision marks the culmination of a years-long legal campaign by conservative challengers to dismantle what they viewed as an unconstitutional check on executive power. Trump’s legal team had argued that the Humphrey’s Executor framework, which allowed presidents to remove only “for cause” officials at multi-member independent agencies, improperly curtailed Article II authority. The court’s new ruling effectively declares those restrictions void, giving Trump and future presidents broad authority to install loyalists at agencies that oversee banking, antitrust enforcement, consumer protection, and labor rights.
A Rare Defeat: Lisa Cook and the Federal Reserve
Even as the court expanded presidential power, it issued a rare rebuff to Trump in a case directly targeting his attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. In Collins v. Yellen, the justices upheld Cook’s right to remain in her position, ruling that the president cannot remove a sitting Fed governor except under the strict “for cause” standard that applies specifically to the Federal Reserve’s unique structure. Cook, only the second Black woman to serve on the Fed’s board, became a focal point of Trump’s ire after she supported interest rate decisions the administration opposed. Trump had argued that the Fed’s removal protections were unconstitutional, but the court disagreed, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing separately to celebrate the ruling as a vindication of institutional independence.
The Fed decision landed as a sharp counterpoint to the broader removal power ruling, underscoring the court’s continuing commitment to at least one island of insulation from direct presidential control. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who was not a party to the case but has been a frequent Trump target, declined to comment directly, but analysts said the ruling provided crucial stability to markets and monetary policy decision-making. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting in the removal power case, was unsparing in her assessment of what the majority had done. “It promises only chaos,” she wrote. The ruling, she warned, would expose career civil servants to political retaliation and undermine the expertise-based governance that keeps federal agencies functioning beyond election cycles.
Mail Ballots, E. Jean Carroll, and What Comes Next
Monday’s rulings were not limited to structural power disputes. In a decision that drew Trump’s immediate condemnation, the court upheld state laws allowing mail ballots received after Election Day to be counted, rejecting the president’s long-running campaign against absentee voting. Trump called the outcome “a little bit surprising” and announced he would push Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill to impose strict new voter ID requirements, proof-of-citizenship rules, and tight restrictions on mail balloting. Civil rights groups praised the mail ballot ruling as a vital protection of electoral access, while Republican attorneys general indicated they would press forward with the legislation Trump called for.
The court also denied Trump’s appeal of the $5 million E. Jean Carroll defamation verdict, leaving the judgment against him intact. Carroll sued Trump for denying her account of an alleged sexual assault in a 2019 magazine essay. A jury awarded her $5 million in damages in 2024, and an appeals court upheld the verdict before Trump brought the case to the Supreme Court. Justices declined without explanation to hear the case, a procedural posture that lets the lower court ruling stand.
With the term nearing its close, the court is expected to issue rulings Tuesday on Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship and on state laws banning transgender athletes from women’s sports. Both decisions carry enormous political and constitutional stakes at the tail end of a term that has fundamentally reshaped the balance of power between the executive branch, Congress, and the federal judiciary. Legal scholars said Monday’s decisions, taken together, represent the most significant expansion of presidential authority since the post-Watergate reforms of the 1970s, and potentially a preview of how the court will approach the remaining cases still to come.
