The U.S. Supreme Court seemed inclined to give the president more power over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as the justices considered whether Congress went too far in trying to insulate the agency from political pressure, Bloomberg News reported. Hearing arguments in Washington, D.C. yesterday, the Court’s conservatives suggested they agreed with Trump administration contentions that the Constitution requires the president to have broad ability to fire the agency’s director. When Congress set up the agency, it gave the director a five-year term and said the person could be ousted only for specified reasons. Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that the current CFPB director, an appointee of President Donald Trump, is serving a term that will last until the end of 2023. “The head of this agency will go at least three or four years into the next president’s term, and the next president might have a completely different conception of consumer financial regulatory issues, yet will be able to do nothing about it,” Kavanaugh said. The case could mean a fundamental change for the CFPB, created as the brainchild of now-Senator Elizabeth Warren after the 2008 financial crisis to regulate credit cards, auto loans and other consumer finance products. Read more.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-03/supreme-court-seems-…
Click here to read the transcript of yesterday's oral argument.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2019/1…
