Dodd-Frank enforcement agency puts Indian tribes in the crosshairs

Others took issue with the CFPB’s novel tactics. “The CFPB really ambushed the tribes,” said John Berlau, an economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “They filed that brief right when the tribes were filing their reply brief, and the tribes really don’t have a chance to [officially] respond.”

Berlau also contends that the CFPB should have filed its brief through the Justice Department’s solicitor general. “I’ve never seen a case where a separate federal agency files an amicus brief in which the Justice Department has not signed on to,” he told TheDCNF.

“The CFPB is an agency accountable to no one,” Berlau concluded. “It is acting separate from the rest of the government and this proves it… They have a paternalistic attitude about payday loans, and they’re exceeding all bounds to stamp them into the ground, not realizing that both the tribes and lower-income consumers would be hurt.”