Community Financial Services of America v. CFPB Amicus Brief

This fall the Supreme Court will be hear a case captioned Community Financial Services of America v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, dealing with the constitutionality of the CFPB's funding mechanism. I'm pleased to announce that Patricia McCoy and I filed an amicus brief today in support of the CFPB. We were very capably represented by Greg Lipper of LeGrand Law.

The tl;dr version: if the 5th Circuit's opinion is upheld it will result in market chaos--all of the CFPB's existing regulations will be void, and that includes things on which market actors rely, such as TILA disclosure safe harbors and ability-to-repay rule safeharbors. Moreover, there's no way to cabin the 5th Circuit's opinion to the CFPB--if the Bureau's funding is unconstitutional, so too is that of every federal banking regulator, including the Federal Reserve Board. There's simply no credible way to do a surgical strike on the Bureau's funding without collateral damage of economic havoc.

Comments

[Robert from yahooboard]

Nice Amicus Brief, I'm just starting to dig into it, an initial thought though, couldn't the Supremes structure a decision that allows the US Congress to pass new or modified Legislation or limit the impact by narrowing the ruling to the case at hand or some other method(s)?

I thought Senator Toomey (now in Senator Haggerty's hands) started working on the problem and have begun drafting.

It seems at the heart of the matter is the James Madison idea of keeping the Power of the Sword and Purse in Separate Hands.

What do you think?