Opinion piece provides an overview of how Congress created the CFPB and its funding and the need for clarification now that the issue has come to the courts.
02/20/2023 3:35 P.M.
1.5 minute read
In an opinion piece for The Washington Post, George F. Will, a columnist covering politics, says the U.S. Supreme Court should hear a case challenging a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision on the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The CFPB last fall filed a petition for certiorari (PDF) for the Supreme Court to review the decision, requesting that the court address whether the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals erred in its ruling that the bureau’s funding structure through the Federal Reserve rather than congressional appropriations violates the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers, ACA International previously reported.
The case, brought by the Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA) against the bureau and director Rohit Chopra, challenged the CFPB’s 2017 payday lending rule in addition to its constitutionality.
In his column titled, “Why Americans Need Protection from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” (a subscription may be required), Will says the Supreme Court should grant the bureau’s petition to hear the case, then “hold that the CFPB’s power to set its own budget results from Congress’s violation of the nondelegation doctrine: Congress cannot delegate to others powers the Constitution vests exclusively in it.”
Will provides an overview of how Congress created the CFPB and its funding and the need for clarification now that the issue has come to the courts.
“The court should put this case on its autumn calendar, giving both sides preparation time commensurate with the stakes, which implicate all three branches. This case involves the judiciary’s duty to thwart Congress’s self-diminishment by impermissibly delegating power to an executive branch that wields an administrative state increasingly immune from effective control or even monitoring by Congress.”
Will’s column is also available here.
A decision from the Supreme Court on the CFPB’s petition is expected in the coming days.
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