None of us should be surprised by the Supreme Court’s brief order today, which allows Lisa Cook to remain, for now, a Federal Reserve governor and voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, while the case involving President Trump’s attempt to fire her proceeds. (See the New York Times report on the two-sentence order.)

As we’ve covered at NR (see, e.g., here and here), the Supreme Court has signaled that it is poised to overrule its 1935 Humphrey’s Executor precedent, which endorsed administrative agencies not bound by the Constitution’s separation of powers principles, and upheld congressional restrictions on the president’s power to fire government officers who wield executive power. Yet, both the Court and the Trump administration have indicated that they regard the Fed as different from other administrative agencies — the Court for legal reasons (involving the Fed’s unique structure and history), the Trump administration out of the political calculation that the market and the public do not want Fed independence disturbed.

For that reason, even though the Court has allowed Trump to remove other agency heads while their cases are pending, there was (in my view) no chance that the justices would green-light the removal of Cook while the case proceeded. Not only has the Court signaled that the Fed’s independence from the political branches will be upheld; President Trump has purported to fire Cook for cause — i.e., he has accepted Congress’s limitation of his removal authority in the Fed statute. He claims that he can meet the cause standard, not that Congress lacks power to impose the cause standard.

The Court, whose new term begins next Monday, has put the matter on a fast track: briefs soon, oral argument in January, and — barring the unforeseen — a ruling by the end of the term in late June or early July. As a practical matter, that means that Cook will continue to vote on whether to adjust interest rates, including at the FOMC’s upcoming meetings in October, December, and January. Cook voted for the Fed’s quarter-point cut in the September meeting. Trump is pushing for deeper rate cuts.

We’ll continue watching it.