The Supreme Court issued a decision today in the case of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services, affirming that the CFPB's ongoing financial independence from Congress under Dodd-Frank is constitutionally permissible under the Appropriations Clause.
Jack Fitzhenry, Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, expressed his concerns about the decision: “This decision demonstrates the Court’s disconcerting unwillingness to guard the public against the intrigues of political actors who hope to reshape our constitutional order in accord with their preferences. The Constitution’s Appropriations Clause is intended to protect Congress’s control over the public purse."
Fitzhenry further criticized the ruling, stating that "today’s majority decision renders that protection more theoretical than real and sacrifices Congress’s institutional interests to the will of one particularly partisan session. Agencies with substantial policy-making authority like the CFPB now have license to regulate with even less legislative control. And with this decision, there is no real limit to the number and types of agencies that a future Congress may place beyond meaningful public control.”
Joel Griffith, Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, echoed Fitzhenry's sentiments: “In the wake of this ruling, Congress must now reassert its constitutional ‘power of the purse’ to clearly specify that these continuing appropriations from the Federal Reserve to the CFPB will end. Allowing this rogue agency to continue to operate without congressionally authorized annual funding is a shirking of Congress’s responsibilities to the people and reckless forfeiture of their constitutional powers to unaccountable bureaucrats.”
