The Supreme Court has officially placed a legal firewall around the Federal Reserve, blocking President Trump from removing its board members.
In a major ruling issued Thursday, the court told the White House that the Fed is off-limits, even though Trump is currently allowed to fire officials from two other federal boards. This legal distinction came down in a 6–3 decision, clearly dividing which institutions the president can interfere with, and which ones he can’t.
According to a full opinion published by the court, the ruling gave Trump the go-ahead to fire Gwynne Wilcox, a former board member at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and Cathy Harris, who served on the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).
But the court made sure to underline that this case had nothing to do with the Federal Reserve, whose board members — unlike Wilcox and Harris — are protected by law from being fired without cause. The justices flat out rejected the idea that removing these two women would threaten the Fed’s legal independence.
Court lets Trump remove board members but isolates the Fed
Trump had previously dismissed Wilcox and Harris from their appointed roles. Both women challenged the decision in court, saying the president didn’t have the legal authority to remove them. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., agreed with them and blocked the removals.
That decision was upheld by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. But in April, the Supreme Court stepped in and temporarily lifted those rulings, saying the case needed more time. On Thursday, the justices turned that temporary order into an official one.
In the majority opinion, the court said, “Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President … he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents.” That was their legal basis for allowing Trump to fire Wilcox and Harris.
But the court was careful to say this did not mean Trump could do the same thing to people running the Federal Reserve. When Wilcox and Harris tried to argue that their case might impact the Fed, the court responded bluntly: “We disagree.”
The ruling stressed that the Fed is not like other federal boards. It’s a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”
Federal Reserve given special legal protection
Although the court didn’t directly rule on whether Trump — or any president — could fire someone at the Fed, they clearly drew a legal line in the sand. If a future case tried to challenge the Federal Open Market Committee or the Board of Governors, the opinion signaled that the court would not be supportive.
This is important because Trump has had public tensions with the Fed and especially with Chairman Jerome Powell, who was appointed under his previous administration but later drew Trump’s criticism.
The legal language from the court suggested that the Federal Reserve is more insulated than other agencies. The justices said the government faced “greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.”
But once again, they pointed out that this logic does not apply to the Federal Reserve. That agency is not viewed as part of the president’s executive power structure in the same way.
The three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented from the ruling. They believed that removing Wilcox and Harris before the case was settled was unfair. But the majority didn’t budge. They said that even though this case might need more arguments later, Trump has the right — at least for now — to fire them.
Meanwhile, Jerome Powell has already addressed the legal question directly. When Trump was out of office and still publicly bashing the Fed, Powell said during a press event in November that he would not resign if asked by Trump with a flat “Not permitted under the law.”
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