A judge Tuesday night temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from firing Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook.

Judge Jia Cobb of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the Fed to “allow Cook to remain a member of the Board during the pendency of this litigation.”

That means Cook likely can participate in the Federal Open Market Committee’s next meeting Sept. 16 and 17, to set the interest rate.

Justice Department lawyers, who have been arguing on Trump’s behalf, filed for appeal Wednesday.

White House spokesman Kush Desai, in a statement, said Tuesday’s ruling “will not be the last say on the matter, and the Trump Administration will continue to work to restore accountability and confidence in the Fed.”

The Justice Department said Tuesday it doesn’t “comment on current or prospective litigation including matters that may be an investigation.”

Cobb, in a 49-page ruling, worked through several points of contention in the case, including the threshold of “cause” and whether or not Cook received sufficient notice of her dismissal.

Trump said Aug. 25 he was firing Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud, brought to light by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte and referred to the Justice Department for investigation. Cook sued Trump days later, seeking a temporary restraining order.

Cook’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, had argued that the Fed governor’s firing was a thinly veiled pretext, and that Trump’s motive for removing her was that she disagreed with the president’s oft-repeated desire to lower interest rates.

“This ruling recognizes and reaffirms the importance of safeguarding the independence of the Federal Reserve from illegal political interference,” Lowell said in a statement Tuesday. “Allowing the president to unlawfully remove Governor Cook on unsubstantiated and vague allegations would endanger the stability of our financial system and undermine the rule of law.”

Desai, in his statement, asserted that Trump “lawfully removed” Cook. The president can remove a Fed governor for cause – though the threshold of cause is open to interpretation. Typically, “for cause” firings have involved inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance. However, Trump has argued the mortgage fraud allegations against Cook – for which no charges have been filed – are sufficient.

Cobb, however, wrote that Trump “has not identified anything related to Cook’s conduct or job performance as a Board member that would indicate that she is harming the Board or the public interest by executing her duties unfaithfully or ineffectively," Cobb wrote in her ruling.

The mortgage issue in question occurred in 2021 – before Cook was confirmed to the Fed board, Cobb noted.

“Removal was not meant to be based on the President’s assumptions about the official’s future performance as extrapolated from unproven conduct dating from before they assumed the office,” Cobb wrote.

Inconsistencies in DOJ attorneys' definition of "cause" will likely require additional hearings to clarify, Cobb said. 

The lawsuit raises "many serious questions of first impression" that "will benefit from further briefing on a non-emergency timeline," the judge said.

The DOJ indicated it interpreted the Federal Reserve Act as giving the president wide discretion in personnel matters.

That discretion, in Trump’s lawyers’ argument, “leav[es] no role for this court,” Cobb wrote Tuesday. “The court disagrees.”

Beyond the notion of cause, Cook argued she received insufficient notice that she was being dismissed. The mortgage fraud allegations first surfaced in a social media post – as did Trump’s letter that he was firing the Fed governor.

“It is difficult to construe President Trump’s social media post on August 20, 2025, which itself linked to a third-party news article regarding Director Pulte’s allegations, as ‘written notice of the charges against [her],’” Cobb wrote Tuesday. 

Cobb noted that Trump’s comments to reporters two days later “arguably indicated that President Trump was considering firing Cook, [but] they fall short of providing Cook with an ‘explanation of the ... evidence’ that President Trump was considering in weighing his dismissal decision.”

“The Court is highly doubtful that Cook should have been required to piece together the evidentiary basis for a ‘for cause’ removal from a scattered assortment of social media posts and news articles,” Cobb wrote.

Trump has badgered Cook’s boss, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, relentlessly for months, asserting that the interest rate should be at least 3 percentage points lower than it is. FOMC members voted 9-2 in July to keep the rate steady. The two dissents came from Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman and Gov. Christopher Waller – both Trump appointees.

The August resignation of now-former Fed Gov. Adriana Kugler and the move to oust Cook, though, put Trump on the brink of holding a majority on the seven-member Fed board. Additionally, Powell last month primed the market for a potential decrease in the interest rate.

The Fed on Tuesday made no new statement on the ruling, pointing instead to a previous comment that it would abide by any court order.

“The public interest in Federal Reserve independence weighs in favor of Cook’s reinstatement,” Cobb wrote Tuesday.