General Discussion

dalton99a

(81,468 posts) Mon Jun 29, 2020, 10:49 AM Jun 2020

Supreme Court Lifts Limits on Trump's Power to Fire Consumer Watchdog

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/us/cfpb-supreme-court.html

Supreme Court Lifts Limits on Trump’s Power to Fire Consumer Watchdog
The case concerning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was part of a politically charged battle over presidential authority.
By Adam Liptak
June 29, 2020, 10:37 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the president is free to fire the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without cause. The decision, rejecting a federal law that sought to place limits on presidential oversight of independent agencies, was a victory for the conservative movement to curb the administrative state.

The vote was 5 to 4, with the court’s five more conservative justices in the majority.

The bureau, the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, then a law professor at Harvard and now a senator and former presidential candidate, was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed in 2010 after the financial crisis. In an effort to protect the bureau’s independence, the statute said the president could remove its director only for cause, defined as “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance.”

Business groups have long accused the bureau of regulatory overreach. They challenged the law’s limit on presidential power in court, saying that it violated the separation of powers. The Trump administration agreed with the challengers. The bureau once took the opposite position, but it changed its stance last year, agreeing that its director could be fired at will.

The case before the court, Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, No. 19-7, was brought by a law firm that objected to an investigation of aspects of its debt relief services. The firm challenged the bureau’s power to conduct the investigation, saying its director was unconstitutionally insulated from presidential control.