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Is there any ceiling, or floor, to what the CFPB can decide to spend?.. The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in a challenge to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s novel self-funding scheme (CFPB v. Community Financial Services Assn.) A telling moment came when Justice Neil Gorsuch pressed the Solicitor General on the limits to the agency’s appropriations power. Democrats insulated the CFPB from political accountability in the Dodd-Frank Act by letting it obtain its funding from the Federal Reserve, unlike any other federal agency. Payday lenders say this violates the Constitution’s command that “no Money shall be drawn...

The Supreme Court has scarcely filled its docket for the 2023-24 term, but it is already shaping up to a major term for administrative law. Among the cases accepted for next term with potentially significant implications for administrative law are the following: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America—Whether the court of appeals erred in holding that the statute providing funding to the CFPB violates the appropriations clause in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, and in vacating a regulation promulgated at a time when the Bureau was receiving such funding. (I wrote about the...

A data breach by an employee at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is sending shock waves through the financial services industry, raising far more questions than answers about how an employee was able to obtain information on more than 250,000 consumers and dozens of companies.The agency, whose mission is to go after bad behavior at financial institutions, said the employee is "no longer employed by the CFPB." Lawmakers were told of the data breach on March 21, according to the Wall Street Journal. The CFPB said it had identified "a confidential-information and privacy incident" in which a now-former CFPB employee...

A court tossed out a regulation written by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for payday lenders last week, saying the agency's funding was unconstitutional and that it, therefore, lacked the ability to curb the industry. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit voided a CFPB rule that prohibited payday lenders from debiting the accounts of customers who miss a payment without getting their consent first. While the ruling applied just to that regulation, financial service attorneys say it muddies the agency's authority and has the potential to upend all of its rules. "The Fifth Circuit's ruling potentially calls...

President Biden on Wednesday announced that the administration will take on so-called junk fees as a way to help bring down costs for Americans during high inflation. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is taking new steps to eliminate billions in banking fees, hidden charges and added fees on cable bills, airline tickets and hotel bookings. “Today my administration is announcing new actions to lower the costs of everyday living for American families, to put more money in the pockets of middle income and working class Americans, to hold big corporations accountable,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. The...

Three judges appointed by former President Donald Trump handed down an astonishing decision on Wednesday, effectively holding that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency charged with protecting consumers from a wide range of predatory activity by lenders and other financial services, is unconstitutional and must be stripped of its authority. The decision by the conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit relies on a novel reading of an obscure provision of the Constitution, and is entirely at odds with a Supreme Court decision that rejects the Fifth Circuit’s reading of that provision. This is not...

WASHINGTON—One of America’s most powerful regulators of business and finance has, at first glance, a relatively small job. Rohit Chopra’s title is director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which regulates consumer finance. From that perch, he has built substantial sway at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which oversees about 5,000 banks, and the Federal Trade Commission, the antitrust watchdog.

The new president availed himself of Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.The U.S. Supreme Court's June 2020 decision in Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was not warmly received by certain progressive activists. "The far right just scored a victory," announced Marge Baker of People for the American Way. "Powerful corporate forces have turned their losing political case into a rigged constitutional one," intoned Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D–R.I.). "They've moved fringe legal theories into mainstream conservative legal thought." At issue in the case was the legality of the single-director structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Although...

Biden taps bevy of Obama alums for review of controversial financial agency Leandra English, who spent months trying to seize control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from President Donald Trump, will lead Joe Biden's transition team for the agency, the Biden campaign announced Tuesday. English will be in charge of a team of seven others, including the legislative director for the United Autoworkers and six alums of the Obama-era CFPB. The group will advise the Biden campaign on taking over the agency when Biden assumes office in January. English rose to public attention in 2017, when she claimed...

I know, I know – the only things that matter right now are the election and filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Certainly nothing matters more, but other things matter and the public can’t afford to take its eyes off all of them. The fight against Democrats is a multi-front battle, and every front must be minded and tended, always. Sometimes fronts that were everything a minute ago fade into oblivion because of the hysteria created to manipulate the public. We need to remember to stay focused amid the...

Today’s decision represents an important victory for the fundamental principle that government officials should be accountable to the American people.  The Constitution vests the power of the executive branch solely in the President without any limitation on his ability to remove leaders of executive agencies.  As Alexander Hamilton so eloquently argued in Federalist 70, unity in the executive branch is essential for providing the President with the authority needed for the effective administration of government and to make the President fully accountable to the electorate every four years for the management of the executive branch, which inherently includes the...

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional, determining that its head must be removable at the will of the president. The decision reduces the power of the agency, the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, and is a victory for business groups. The court stopped short, though, of eliminating the bureau, as sought by conservatives. "The agency may therefore continue to operate, but its Director, in light of our decision, must be removable by the President at will," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 5-4 majority. The decision agreed with a California-based...

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Congress established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an independent regulatory agency tasked with ensuring that consumer debt products are safe and transparent. See Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank), 124 Stat. 1376. Congress transferred the administration of 18 existing federal statutes to the CFPB, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and the Truth in Lending Act; and Congress enacted a new prohibition on unfair and deceptive practices in the consumer-finance sector. 12 U. S. C. §5536(a)(1)(B). In doing so, Congress gave the...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced Monday two notices of proposed rulemaking surrounding what’s commonly known as the QM Patch. One of those rulemakings would remove the debt-to-income requirement from qualified mortgages. Back in January, CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger sent a letter to several prominent members of Congress, saying the bureau has decided to propose an amendment to the QM Rule that would “move away” from DTI as a factor in mortgage underwriting. Specifically, Kraninger said at the time that the CFPB has decided to shift from the DTI standard and move to an “alternative, such as a pricing threshold...

A few weeks before the 2016 election, Brett Kavanaugh, then a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, drew a lot of attention with a ruling concluding that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, conceived in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, was unconstitutional. The agency, in the judge’s view, was simply too powerful, and Congress erred when making its director independent of, and unaccountable to, the president of the United States. That design, as conceived by lawmakers, served the purpose of insulating the CFPB from undue political influence — say, from...

The Obama Government’s Secret Societies Exposing the anti-Trump conspiracy within the DOJ. January 24, 2018 Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism. A week after the election, groups inside and outside the government, some calling themselves Obama Anonymous, had begun meeting to plan the “resistance” to Trump. Unlike the angry protesters in the streets, this resistance wasn’t a new organization. It consisted of Washington D.C. government lifers. At the CFPB, there was a group calling itself Dumbledore’s Army. Within the FBI...

Last week, Fifth Third Bank revealed that it was facing a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforcement action over “alleged unauthorized account openings.” And Monday, the other shoe dropped when the CFPB said it is suing Cincinnati-based Fifth Third alleging the bank’s employees opening accounts in customers’ names without their consent in order to meet sales goals and earn incentives. According to the CFPB, “for several years Fifth Third, without consumers’ knowledge or consent: opened deposit and credit-card accounts in consumers’ names; transferred funds from consumers’ existing accounts to new, improperly opened accounts; enrolled consumers in unauthorized online-banking services; and activated...

The Supreme Court will hear a constitutional challenge to the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). At issue is a provision that gives the bureau’s director uniquely strong job protections — the director may only be removed by the president for-cause. Justice Brett Kavanaugh is poised for a significant role in the case, as he wrote a sweeping 80-page opinion as an appeals court judge arguing the contested provision is unlawful. The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will hear a constitutional challenge to the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a watchdog agency whose existence...

Equifax will pay up to a record $650million to settle US federal and state probes into a massive 2017 data breach of personal information, authorities said on Monday. The largest-ever settlement for a data breach draws to a close multiple probes into Equifax by the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) and nearly all state attorneys general. It also resolves pending class-action lawsuits against the company. 'This company´s ineptitude, negligence, and lax security standards endangered the identities of half the US population,' New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.

As college graduates have their commencement celebrations, they certainly hope their hard work will pay off. After all, in the booming Trump economy and with record low unemployment, there are countless opportunities for entrepreneurship and success. Sadly, there is one reason why those dreams may never get off the ground: crushing school debt. As too many students and parents are painfully aware, there are more than 44 million borrowers in America who collectively owe $1.5 trillion. Because of these obligations, young adults are putting off essential milestones in life — such as buying a home and getting married — while...