The CFPB Survives (Slate)
In a blockbuster ruling, the D.C. Circuit reminds the Trump administration that real liberty isn’t limited to corporations.
By Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern
Jan 31, 20185:19 PM
In a rebuke to the Trump administration’s deregulatory ambitions, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau complies with the Constitution. Many Republicans and attorneys in the financial industry had claimed a key provision of the CFPB—which provides for an independent director with a five-year term in office, subject to removal by the president only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office”—unconstitutionally strips the president of his constitutional powers as set forth in Article II. In a 7–3 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit disagreed.
Wednesday’s decision marks a forceful rebuke to the Trump administration’s alarmingly broad theory of executive power. Since taking office, Donald Trump has acted as though every employee of the federal government must carry out his agenda or risk termination. His judicial appointees have translated this vision into legal principles that bolster the president’s authority to do whatever he wants. The D.C. Circuit flatly rebuffed this view, shielding a vital agency from the president’s partisan whims. In doing so, it rejected an artificial conception of constitutional liberty in favor of a pragmatic and fundamentally democratic jurisprudence.
The CFPB, which Congress created as part of the Dodd-Frank Act to regulate Wall Street following the 2008 financial crash, has returned about $11.8 billion to roughly 29 million consumers since 2011. But this winter, Trump installed his Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney—an avowed enemy of the bureau—as its acting director. Mulvaney recently requested zero dollars in funding for the agency, fueling fears he will defang it altogether. (Leandra English, who serves as deputy director, continues to argue in court that she should head the CFPB.)
The constitutional challenge to the CFPB centers on the president’s authority to manage executive branch officials. The Trump administration claimed that, because the CFPB is part of the executive branch, the president must be able to fire its director at will. PHH, a mortgage company the CFPB had fined $109 million in 2015 for allegedly running an illegal insurance kickback scheme, went further, arguing in court that the agency should be dissolved altogether. In October 2016, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of PHH, arguing that the agency’s structure was unconstitutional. The full D.C. Circuit then vacated the panel’s decision and reheard the case and has now affirmed the agency’s constitutionality.
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more: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/the-d-c-circuits-ruling-to-protect-the-cfpb-is-a-massive-rebuke-to-trump.html
A little good news, against an alarming trend.
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