A Supreme Court Ruling on Labor Boards Could Let Trump Take Over the Federal Reserve

The fired board members argue that a ruling against them would hand Trump control over independent monetary policy. Fed chair Jerome Powell says it’s something he’s “monitoring carefully.”

Jerome Powell

Powell insisted Wednesday that “generally speaking, Fed independence is very widely understood. Erin Hooley/AP

If the Supreme Court rules that President Donald Trump is allowed to fire the members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protections Board, the justices would also be implicitly giving Trump more control over interest rates and monetary policy, a group of legal scholars and the fired board members argued to the top court this week.

On its face, the case in question is just about fired federal workers — specifically, Gwynne Wilcox from the NLRB and Cathy Harris from the MSPB.

But all the parties agree that a bigger legal question is at play on the subject of the president’s power. Some close court watchers say the only logical extension of the government’s arguments is political control over the Federal Reserve too.