A group of former Federal Reserve Chairs and other former top economic officials have urged the Supreme Court to allow Lisa Cook to remain as a Central Bank Governor.
The group, led former Central Bank Chiefs; Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen said that “allowing the removal of Governor Lisa D. Cook while the challenge to her removal is pending would threaten that independence and erode public confidence in the Fed.”
The group noted that the independence of the Federal Reserve, within the limited authority granted by Congress to achieve the goals Congress itself has set, is a “critical feature of our national monetary system.”
Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen served as successive Chairs of the Fed’s seven-member Board of Governors, spanning six presidential administrations back to 1987.
Greenspan and Bernanke were initially appointed by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, respectively. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated Yellen to the Fed and she was Democratic President Joe Biden’s Treasury Secretary.
The list of signatories includes other Treasury Secretaries, Heads of the Council of Economic Advisers and former Senator Phil Gramm, a former Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
The group’s filing comes as the Supreme Court justices are weighing an emergency appeal from the administration to remove Cook while her lawsuit challenging her firing by President Donald Trump proceeds through the courts.
The White House campaign to unseat Cook marks an unprecedented bid to reshape the Fed board, which was designed to be largely independent from day-to-day politics. No President has fired a sitting Fed Governor in the agency’s 112-year history.
Trump sought to fire Cook on August 25, 2025, but a judge ruled that she could remain in her job. Trump has accused Cook of mortgage fraud because she appeared to claim two properties, in Michigan and Georgia, as “primary residences” in June and July 2021, before she joined the board.
Such claims can lead to a lower mortgage rate and a smaller down payment than if one of them was declared as a rental property or second home. Cook has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime.
Earlier in September, a judge determined that Trump’s move to fire Cook probably was illegal. An appeals court rejected an emergency plea to oust Cook before the Fed’s meeting last week when Cook joined in a vote to cut a key interest rate by one-quarter of a percentage point.
A day after that meeting, the administration turned to the Supreme Court and again asked for her prompt removal.
Call For Federal Reserve’s Political Independence
In the amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court, the group of economic officials noted that there is broad consensus among Economists, based on decades of macroeconomic research, that a more independent central bank will lead to “lower and more stable inflation without creating higher unemployment — thus helping to achieve the Federal Reserve’s statutory objective of price stability and maximum employment.”
The group added that the Federal Reserve “walks a careful line in pursuit of its goals.” They noted that “elected officials often favor lowering interest rates to boost employment, particularly leading up to an election.”
They said that although that approach may satisfy voters temporarily, it does not lead to lasting gains for unemployment or growth and can instead lead to persistently higher inflation in the long-term and thus ultimately harm the national economy.
Moreover, the former Fed Chairs and economic officials, in their filing, highlight a notorious case of political pressure on the Fed.
“In the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon famously exerted political pressure over then-Chair of the Fed Arthur Burns to lower unemployment by reducing interest rates. During this period ‘the Fed made only limited efforts to maintain policy independence and, for doctrinal as well as political reasons, enabled a decade of high and volatile inflation.’ This contributed to an ‘inflationary boom’ and deep recession that took years to bring back under control.”
Group’s Amicus Brief
The attempt to fire Cook differs from Trump’s dismissal of board members of other independent agencies. Those firings, including at the National Labor Relations Board, Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Product Safety Commission, have been done at will.
In allowing those firings to proceed for now, the Supreme Court cautioned that it viewed the Fed differently. Trump has invoked the provision of the law that set up the Federal Reserve and allowed for Governors to be dismissed “for cause.”
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