A three-judge panel on the 5th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals ruled this week that the CFPB's structure is unconstitutional because Congress has no control over the agency's budget, which is funded entirely by the Federal Reserve. Under the terms of Dodd-Frank, the CFPB is entitled to receive a budget totaling up to 12 percent of the Federal Reserve's annual operating expenses, and the Federal Reserve is not allowed to refuse the CFPB's requests for funding.
Now, that funding model has been used to reverse a ruling by the CFPB as unconstitutional with the potential to put all its rulings since formation into question on the same constitutional basis.
Why it matters: The reasoning behind the ruling, if upheld, could potentially invalidate all the rules enacted by the CFPB over its 11-year existence — including regulations underpinning the U.S. mortgage system.
This is one of the big reasons I oppose the passing of bad law even when it serves a concrete good. It can take a long time to fix the massive problems that such law brings.
And note that a key argument by the court was that there was no precedent for the CFPB's unconstitutional structure. If there had been other agencies with similar setups, this could have been very hard to overturn. Similarly, the CFPB is a precedent for future breaking of the US Constitution along these lines. Without the ruling, there would have been a stronger case for future misdeeds of this sort.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 22 2022, @11:31AM
That is simply not true. As noted by https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/10/20/23414311/cfpb-unconstitutional-fifth-circuit-supreme-court-trump-community-financial [vox.com]:
You haven't provided anything to really show that this is a bad law. It's simply not true that Congress doesn't control the agency's budget. All Congress has to do is pass a law that amends their own 2010 law. The Constitution does not mandate that agencies be subject to the annual appropriations process. In fact, this exists because of laws passed by Congress such as the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 and the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Congress created the annual appropriations process and therefore they also have the right to carve out exceptions where agencies are funded through means outside of this process.
The ruling is complete nonsense, and you've provided nothing of your own to indicate why this is actually a bad law.