Cook Judge ‘Not Persuaded’ by Supreme Court on Trump Firings

The US judge who blocked the ouster of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook joined the growing chorus of her lower court colleagues to reject the idea that the Supreme Court’s recent actions bind her to side with the Trump administration.

US District Judge Jia Cobb in her decision Tuesday said she was “not persuaded” that the justices’ past orders allowing President Donald Trump to fire other officials bars her from keeping Cook in her job for now.

The Washington judge offered a case-by-case analysis for why Cook’s situation is different, including quoting the Supreme Court’s own language about how the Fed is “uniquely structured” from other independent federal agencies with members appointed by the president.

Tensions within the federal judiciary are mounting as the Supreme Court’s conservative majority routinely halts lower court rulings against the Trump administration on an emergency basis, often in orders featuring minimal or no explanation. A number of lower courts have rebuffed the Justice Department’s arguments in favor of reading, in the words of one judge, the justices’ “tea leaves.”

Read More: Trump Blocked by Judge From Ousting Lisa Cook During Lawsuit

Cobb has made clear that she’s aware any ruling against the Trump administration is likely to be appealed and potentially reach the Supreme Court. During a recent hearing, she asked Cook’s attorney for examples of legal precedents that help her avoid being “smacked down” on appeal if she ruled on a core question about what qualifies as “for cause” for a president to remove an official.

The Justice Department filed papers to appeal midday Tuesday.

The escalating frustrations within the court system have at times spilled into public. In onerecent exchange, Justice Neil Gorsuch chided lower courts not to “defy” the justices. A Massachusetts federal judge then wrote in a recent opinion that such criticism was “unhelpful and unnecessary” as she and her colleagues did their best to interpret and apply Supreme Court orders that are not “models of clarity.”

Cobb’s 49-page opinion in the Fed firing fight didn’t feature that type of pointed pushback. Still, she acknowledged the string of recent orders in Trump’s favor from the Supreme Court as well as the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and then offered reasons for why each one doesn’t stop her from siding with Cook now.

Earlier this week, for instance, Chief Justice John Roberts issued an order that temporarily let Trump remove a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission who is suing over her firing. Cobb wrote that Roberts’ time-limited and “nonprecedential” order “provides no basis to doubt” the logic she cited from lower court judges in the FTC case for why a fired official faces “irreparable harm” if they can’t continue to serve amid an ongoing court fight.

Cobb, appointed to the federal bench by former President Joe Biden, addressed other recent agency firing cases in which the justices gave more weight to the harms that Trump faced in having officials exercising executive powers over his objection. The judge wrote that in one of those cases, the Supreme Court made a point of distinguishing the Fed as a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity.”

“Cook is one of seven members of a board that is, by design, not intended to be susceptible to policy pressure, let alone tasked with implementing the president’s agenda,” she wrote.

The case is Cook v. Trump, 25-cv-2903, US District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

To contact the reporter on this story:
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Zoe Tillman, Elizabeth Wasserman

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