FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook attends the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's 2025 Jackson Hole economic symposium, "Labor Markets in Transition: Demographics, Productivity, and Macroeconomic Policy" in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, U.S., August 23, 2025. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart/File Photo

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to reject Donald Trump's attempt to fire her, telling the justices the Republican president's unprecedented move would destroy the central bank's independence and disrupt financial markets.

Lawyers for Cook filed a written response opposing the Justice Department's September 18 emergency request to lift a federal judge's order that blocked Trump from immediately removing Cook, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, while her legal challenge continues.

Granting Trump's request, her lawyers told the Supreme Court, "would eviscerate the Federal Reserve's longstanding independence, upend financial markets and create a blueprint for future presidents to direct monetary policy based on their political agendas and election calendars."

Washington-based U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled on September 9 that Trump's claims that Cook committed mortgage fraud before taking office - allegations that Cook denies - likely were not sufficient grounds for removal under the 1913 law that created the Fed.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a 2-1 ruling on September 15 denied the administration's request to put Cobb's order on hold, ruling that Cook likely was denied due process in violation of the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment.

In Thursday's filing, Cook's lawyers said the Supreme Court is likely to agree that Trump has not met the legal standard for removing Cook with "manufactured charges based on conduct that predates her service on the Board."

Cook, the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, sued Trump in August after the president announced he would remove her. Cook has said the claims made by Trump against her did not give the president the legal authority to remove her and were a pretext to fire her for her monetary policy stance.

Cook's filing echoed the warnings made in a filing to the Supreme Court earlier on Thursday by a group of 18 former U.S. Federal Reserve officials, Treasury secretaries and other top economic officials who served under presidents from both parties.

The group included the past three Fed chairs - Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan - as well as former Treasury secretaries Henry Paulson, Lawrence Summers, Jacob Lew, Timothy Geithner and Robert Rubin. They argued in a brief that letting the president remove Cook while her legal challenge to Trump's action is ongoing would threaten the Fed's independence and erode public confidence in it.

'JUDICIAL INTERFERENCE'

In its filing to the court last week, the Justice Department wrote, "This application involves yet another case of improper judicial interference with the President's removal authority - here, interference with the President's authority to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for cause."

Congress included provisions in the law that created the Fed to shield the central bank from political interference. Under that law, Fed governors may be removed by a president only "for cause," though the law does not define the term nor establish procedures for removal. No president has ever removed a Fed governor, and the law has never been tested in court.

Trump has pursued a broad vision of presidential power since returning to office in January.

The Cook legal battle has ramifications for the Fed's ability to set interest rates without regard to the wishes of politicians, widely seen as critical to any central bank's ability to function independently to carry out tasks such as keeping inflation under control.

Trump this year has demanded that the Fed cut rates aggressively, berating Fed Chair Jerome Powell for his stewardship over monetary policy as the central bank focused on fighting inflation. Trump has called Powell a "numbskull," "incompetent" and a "stubborn moron."

Cook took part in the Fed's highly anticipated two-day meeting in Washington this month in which it decided to cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, as policymakers responded to concerns about weakness in the job market. Cook was among those voting in favor of the cut.

Trump on August 25 said he was removing Cook from the Fed's Board of Governors, citing the allegations that, before joining the central bank in 2022, she falsified records to obtain favorable terms on a mortgage.

A loan estimate for an Atlanta home purchased by Cook shows that she had declared the property as a "vacation home," according to a document reviewed by Reuters, information that would appear to undercut the allegations against her.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)