The head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau now believes that the financial regulator she leads is unconstitutionally structured, CNBC.com reported. CFPB Director Kathleen Kraninger notified senior lawmakers yesterday that the bureau had determined that the law that established the agency in the wake of the financial crisis gave her too much independence. That brings her position in line with the one adopted by the Department of Justice in March 2017. “Mindful of the Bureau’s role as an Executive agency within the Executive Branch [...] I have decided that the Bureau should adopt the Department of Justice’s view,” Kraninger wrote in letters to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). She noted that the Department of Justice, on behalf of the bureau, had formally filed a brief with the Supreme Court including her new position. The case the brief was filed in connection with is Seila Law v. CFPB. Seila Law, a California law firm, is challenging the single-director structure of the bureau. Unlike the heads of some other agencies, the director of the CFPB can be removed by the president only for cause. In its brief with the Supreme Court, the Justice Department urged the justices to take up the case and find the structure of the agency unconstitutional. But, it said, it would be possible to limit the power of the agency’s director without scrapping it altogether.
