The US Supreme Court refused to take up a case challenging the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Monday.
This Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case came after a June 8 decision by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which affirmed the constitutionality of the agency. The petition for review presented three questions for the court:
- Whether Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act violates the Constitution’s separation of powers by creating the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (“CFPB”) as an independent agency that exercises expansive executive authority over private citizens but is led by a single Director that the President cannot remove from office for policy reasons, is exempted from Congress’s power of the purse and accompanying congressional oversight, and has no internal checks or balances (such as those afforded by a deliberative multi-member commission structure) to mitigate this lack of accountability and restraint.
- Whether Humphrey’s Ex’r v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), should be overturned.
- Whether the Appropriations Clause, in conjunction with the Constitution’s separation of powers, permits Congress to create perpetual, on-demand funding streams for executive agencies that are unreviewably drawn from the coffers of other independent agencies.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh did not participate in the consideration of the appeal because he was involved in reviewing the case during his prior tenure as a DC Circuit judge.
