Supreme Court to Hear Lawsuit on CFPB Unconstitutionality: CEI Statements

On news today that the United States Supreme Court will hear a constitutional challenge to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CEI experts said they were glad the high court would at last review serious concerns about the agency and the power it wields.

“As a party in the first major challenge to the constitutionality of this agency, we are glad to see that this issue has now been taken up by the Supreme Court,” CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.

“We urge the Supreme Court to rule that the CFPB as structured is unconstitutional in order to help ensure government agencies are accountable to American consumers and voters,” said CEI Senior Fellow John Berlau. “Under the leadership of current Director Kathleen Kraninger, the CFPB has made some positive, free-market reforms that greatly benefit consumers. But her good leadership doesn’t change our belief that the CFPB must be made constitutionally accountable by having a director subject to at-will removal by the person that Americans elect as their president.”

CEI was a plaintiff in the case of State National Bank of Big Spring v. Mnuchin, (D.C. Cir. 2018), contending that the CFPB’s structure violated both the president’s removal power and Congress’s duty of congressional oversight. The Supreme Court denied cert in that case, apparently on procedural grounds, in early 2019.

The current case before the court is Seila Law vs. CFPB, which challenges the vast, unaccountable powers wielded by the bureau as it was set up by Congress.

Related analysis: In Praise of Pro-Consumer Tenure of Finance Regulator Kraninger