On Thursday evening, the Supreme Court handed down a brief order, which temporarily permits President Donald Trump to fire two federal officials who, by law, are shielded from being summarily terminated. That, in itself, is not particularly significant because, on April 9, Chief Justice John Roberts acted on his own authority to temporarily permit Trump to fire the same two officials. So the practical effect of Thursday’s order in Trump v. Wilcox is simply to maintain the status quo.

That said, the Thursday order does contain some important new information from the Court’s Republican majority. While the Republican justices have signaled for quite some time that they are eager to give the president broad authority to fire officials that Congress intended to insulate from presidential control, the order includes a paragraph signaling that they will not allow Trump to fire members of the Federal Reserve.

From a legal perspective, the paragraph is difficult to parse. And, as Justice Elena Kagan writes in a dissenting opinion, is not supported by the legal authority it cites. But it is likely to reassure investors that, while the Supreme Court does appear eager to expand Trump’s authority over previously independent parts of the federal government, it won’t permit him to disrupt the Fed’s ability to make technocratic decisions about interest rates.

The immediate stakes in Wilcox involve a former member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which enforces labor laws and adjudicates union-related disputes, along with a former member of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which hears disputes claiming that a civil servant’s employment protections were violated. Trump fired both shortly after taking office, despite the fact that federal law only permits them to be fired for some sort of neglect or malfeasance.

The NLRB and the MSPB, moreover, are just two of an array of “independent” agencies led by multi-member boards, whose members all enjoy similar employment protections – agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Reserve.

For at least 15 years, when the Court handed down Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Board (2010), a majority of the justices have signaled that they are eager to strip Congress of its authority to create such independent agencies, and give the president full authority to fire these agencies’ leaders at will. Many economists and investors, meanwhile, have warned that it would be particularly dangerous to strip the Federal Reserve — which is supposed to set interest rates based on delicate economic calculations and not based on what will benefit the sitting president —........

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