The U.S. Supreme Court halted President Donald Trump's attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook while her case against him is being adjudicated in a rare step for the conservative-led court which has consistently ended nationwide injunctions and stays on other matters.

The court will hear the full case in January, reported legal expert Anna Bower.

"This ensures that no matter what the justices decide, Cook will be able to vote in at least one more rate-setting meeting in December, and possibly another in March, depending on when the court rules," wrote Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney.

"This order provides yet another indication that the Supreme Court will (1) let Trump fire the leaders of every other agency, but (2) maintain a lone carve-out for the Federal Reserve that prevents him from firing its members without a good, legitimate reason," wrote Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern.

"When Trump tried to remove FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, SCOTUS set the case for arguments—but kept Slaughter fired in the meantime. When Trump tried to remove the Fed's Lisa Cook, SCOTUS set the case for argument—but *let Cook keep serving* in the meantime. That difference says a lot," he added.

Lawfare's Roger Parloff called the decision "HUGE."

"One word of caution to those viewing this as a big win for Cook: This will be the fifth argument #SCOTUS has heard on an application since 1971; in each of the previous four (all since 2022), the applicant *won.* Letting Cook keep her job for now won't stop the Court from ruling against her later," Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck wrote on Bluesky.

"To be clear, this is a much better sign for Cook than we've seen in any of the *other* removal cases. But the notion that letting her stay on the Board for now necessarily defeats the government's irreparable harm argument is belied by the Court's behavior in, e.g., the birthright citizenship cases," he added.

"Put aside the issue with SCOTUS's bespoke exception for the Fed on the absolute removal power, this really flies in the face of the repeated pronouncements that allowing someone to stay in office in spite of the president's whims is always irreparable harm to the government," commented Owen Barcala, a civil litigator in New Mexico. "They don't even decide the issue—because that would make the inconsistency clear—they just defer it until the main hearing."

"His tariffs are unconstitutional. His using the military to play cop on our streets is unconstitutional. But we don’t have a Congress right now, and this Supreme Court can’t be trusted to follow the law & the Constitution. We’re in a very bad place," he wrote on X.