All living former chairs of the Federal Reserve urged the Supreme Court to rule in favor of keeping Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook on the board, filing a friend-of-the-court brief with other top U.S. economic advisers.
President Donald Trump filed an emergency docket on Sept. 18 asking the Supreme Court to rule on whether he has the authority to fire Cook from her position on the Federal Reserve Board. Cook’s lawyers have to respond to the court before 4 p.m. Thursday. Meanwhile, Cook’s lawsuit against Trump’s ordered removal of her is playing out in lower courts.
The friend-of-the-court brief, pleading with the court to maintain the status quo, has 18 listed signatories. It was submitted by counsel from the signatories, Covington & Burling LLP.
The signers urged the court to deny the Trump administration’s request for a stay, “because 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 writers of the brief said.
The writers listed several reasons why Federal Reserve independence is important, including a lower inflation rate and lower borrowing costs.
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“Granting the government’s request to remove Governor Cook from the Board immediately would upset these longstanding protections and the essential functions they serve,” the brief said. “Doing so would expose the Federal Reserve to political influences, thereby eroding public confidence in the Fed’s independence and jeopardizing the credibility and efficacy of U.S. monetary policy.”
The signatories include former Federal Reserve chairs Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke, and Alan Greenspan, who each independently served from 1987 to 2018. Former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, and Jacob Lew also signed the brief. Yellen was also Treasury Secretary under President Joe Biden after her term on the board of governors.
