Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s decisions expanding Trump’s firing power but preserving Fed for now

By John Fritze, Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a significant win Monday by allowing him to remove the leaders of once-independent federal agencies at will, toppling a 1935 precedent in the process that could reorder the way the government functions.

At the same time, the court made it far harder for this or future presidents to remove members of the Federal Reserve — blocking the Trump administration, for now, from ending the tenure of Fed Governor Lisa Cook over contested allegations of mortgage fraud.

The decisions were the latest development in a series of controversies that erupted during the first months of Trump’s second term. He sought to fire critics within the government despite federal laws that protected them by requiring a president to show cause — such as malfeasance — before booting them from office.

Meanwhile, the court dealt Trump a personal defeat, letting stand the verdict against him for sexually abusing and defaming former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. By declining to hear Trump’s appeal, the court paved the way for Carroll to collect $5 million in damages.

In a separate ruling, the justices also allowed states to collect and count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, a decision that comes as Trump lobbies Congress to limit mail voting and pass a voter ID law.

Here are the key takeaways from the court’s major decisions Monday:

Split decision on presidential power

The Supreme Court handed down two opinions at the same time on Monday on the firing of government officials – one that was a loss for Trump and the other that was a win.

The more significant decision, decided 6-3 along conservative-liberal lines, centered on Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, whom Trump fired from the Federal Trade Commission last year despite a federal law that requires presidents to show cause — such as malfeasance — before booting commissioners.

Trump had argued that, as the head of the executive branch, he should have the power to control the leaders of independent agencies within the federal government and that the law intended to shield those officials from removal violated separation of powers principles.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts largely agreed.

“Subordinates who exercise the president’s power are subject to removal by him,” Roberts wrote. “Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the president, and the president to the people.”

The second case, dealing with Cook, also touched on the president’s ability to remove an official — but under different circumstances. In that case, Trump attempted to dump Cook based on allegations that she had committed mortgage fraud.

The president announced the firing on social media last year, posting a letter that accused Cook of “deceitful and potentially criminal conduct” because she allegedly claimed two different homes as her primary residence in 2021.

Cook has denied any wrongdoing and has called the charges “manufactured.”

Slaughter, meanwhile, decried the ruling against her and called the major difference between the two issues.

“Somehow Wall Street is special and gets special treatment, but other than that, the agencies that look out for everyday Americans do not,” Slaughter said at a news conference Monday.

Humphrey’s Executor executed

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority could have taken a more limited way out of the Slaughter case. It could have ruled, for instance, that the power of the FTC has grown so vast since it was created in 1914 that it no longer qualified as agency that should be independent from the leader of the executive branch.

While the court did say those things, it also steered to a broad outcome by overruling a 1935 Supreme Court precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor v. US that allowed Congress to include restrictions on when a president may fire the leaders of certain independent agencies.

Roberts’ disdain for Humphrey’s virtually dripped off the page of his opinion.

“If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it,” Roberts wrote. “Humphrey’s has for decades been a result in search of a rationale.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s senior liberal, read an impassioned dissent warning that the decision could lead to “only chaos.”

Taking the rare step of reading from the bench — a sign of her strong disagreement – Sotomayor warned the decision would “fundamentally recalibrate the balance of power in the nation.”

Sotomayor wrote that the decision “undoes centuries of political practice” and would ultimately make the federal government worse.

Humphrey’s Executor dates back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s tenure. Roosevelt fired an FTC commissioner, William Humphrey, in 1933 who had been appointed by President Herbert Hoover. Humphrey argued that his firing violated the law and his estate sought to recover his salary.

The Supreme Court unanimously agreed at the time that his dismissal was improper.

In the decades since, the precedent has shielded some two dozen independent agencies from presidential interference, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Transportation Safety Board, among others. To fire the leaders of those agencies, presidents needed to show cause.

Now, they likely will not.

“Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the president would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work,” Roberts wrote. “Subordinates who exercise the president’s power are subject to removal by him.”

Trump v. Cook fight will continue

Though Cook won her battle in the fight over Trump’s ability to fire her, whether she wins the ultimate war over her job remains an open question – and one that is likely to return to the Supreme Court in the future.

The high court’s decision Monday dealt partly with the technical – yet hugely consequential – question of whether Cook should be allowed to remain on the Federal Reserve Board while she challenges the president’s bid to remove her. But the ruling, delivered in an opinion also penned by Roberts, made clear that there may be a world in which Trump can lawfully fire her.

Roberts and the four justices who signed on to his opinion (conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh and liberal Justices Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson) said federal law required Trump to give Cook adequate due process before firing her. The president’s decision to announce her ousting via a curt social media post, Roberts wrote, was insufficient.

Instead, the chief said, she “was entitled to some explanation of the evidence at issue, some avenue for a response, and a deadline by which a response would be due.”

Trump will now have to provide her with a chance to contest the allegations lodged against her. After that happens, lower courts will be able to scrutinize “the validity and sufficiency of such charges” with the benefit of having a more developed factual record in hand, Roberts wrote.

Without some form of review, the court said, the president would have power to remove Fed leaders “at any time, for any reason, without any notice before, and without any judicial check after. That would turn for-cause protection into little more than at-will employment.”

That means that the case is all but certain to land back at the high court at some point. “The ultimate question of whether the President can remove Cook for cause will depend in part on the underlying facts,” Roberts wrote.

For now, while that review happens, Cook will remain in her job.

Trump quickly seized on the “strictly procedural basis” on which the court resolved the case on Monday, writing in a post on Truth Social that his administration “will take appropriate action immediately” to try to keep Cook off the board.

Unease over ‘destabilizing’ the economy

Looming large over Cook’s case were concerns from economists, politicians and others about the possibility of Trump triggering economic ruin if he was allowed to fire members of the Federal Reserve with little to no oversight.

Kavanaugh, who was put on the bench by Trump, made clear that he shares that anxiety.

He wrote in a concurring opinion that if the court permitted Trump to fire Cook for now, it would leave unanswered the question of whether the nation’s central bank is a truly independent body.

“Leaving that question open would create significant uncertainty about whether the Court might soon eliminate the Federal Reserve’s independence, and thereby expose the Federal Reserve to political influences and jeopardize the efficacy of U. S. monetary policy,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Even temporary uncertainty about the status of the Federal Reserve could spark … turmoil in the US and world economies.”

“I would not go down that road. I would not risk destabilizing the US economy,” he wrote in part.

Cook’s attorneys had leaned hard into the potential economic consequences of a win for Trump. It was clear that, in this case at least, the justices were listening.

Economists broadly agree that an independent Fed is essential for a stable US economy. The Federal Reserve addresses times of high inflation and high unemployment by swaying interest rates in either direction based on what economic figures show. A politicized Fed would mean the US central bank isn’t doing what’s in the best interest of the US economy.

Fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, however, disagreed with Kavanaugh’s premise that the Fed has been a good steward of the US economy. He wrote in a dissenting opinion that “many do not share the court’s rosy appraisal of the past century.”

“But if the court prefers an independent Federal Reserve Board, then its issue is not with the President but with the Constitution,” Thomas wrote.

Mail-in ballot ruling angers Trump

In another high-profile move, the justices upheld state laws that count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day – which amounted to a repudiations of Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread fraud in mail voting.

The high court rejected Republican arguments that the practice, embraced by more than a dozen states, runs afoul of federal laws setting the November Election Day. Trump has repeatedly and falsely equated mail-in balloting and lengthy vote counts with “cheating,” even though he has voted by mail several times.

Writing for a 5-4 court, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett described the dispute as a “narrow” one, focused on the Mississippi law that counts “ballots postmarked by election day, but received up to five days later.”

“The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt and we cannot add to the words Congress chose,” Barrett wrote, joined by Roberts and the court’s three liberals.

“Election fraud and its appearance are serious issues,” Barrett added. “Like other such issues, however, they must be addressed through the democratic process.”

Trump blasted the decision in a social media post, calling it a “tremendous loss.”

“NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY DEPLOYMENT, OR TRAVEL!),” Trump wrote.

Trump punished in the pocketbook

Just before the Supreme Court began handing down its opinion, it declined to take up Trump’s appeal in the Carroll case. Per its normal practice, the court did not explain its reasoning and no justice publicly dissented.

The court’s decision means the president will now have to pay Carroll the $5 million, which was awarded to her several years ago by a jury in New York after it found that Trump defamed her when he claimed she made up her story that he sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s.

Trump transferred $5.5 million to a court-controlled account in 2023 following the jury verdict so Carroll is likely to receive the cash relatively quickly.

Trump, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, has claimed US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the civil trial, made numerous errors by allowing the jury to hear testimony from two women who alleged Trump sexually assaulted them years ago.

Trump also argued that the judge should not have let the jurors see the “Access Hollywood” tape, which captured Trump in 2005 on a hot mic saying he gropes and kisses women.

The appeal was rescheduled for months at the Supreme Court, which repeatedly set it for discussion and then yanked it from the agenda.

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CNN’s Tierney Sneed, Bryan Mena and Abigail Roedersheimer contributed to this report.