The nation’s High Court ruled by a 7-2 margin that funding for the agency IS legal….
Justice Clarence Thomas actually wrote the majority opinion ….(Hot Damn!)
Conservative’s wanted to defund the agencies which Congress gave power for providing Federal financial oversight over consumer affairs that involve mortgages, credit cards, consumer loans and banking.
This IS a ruling that goes against the courts recent trend to favor state’s control over federal actions….
The ruling also throws out a Trump Appeals court ruling against the agencies funding that differed with other courts….
The Supreme Court rejected a challenge on Thursday to the way the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is funded, one that could have hobbled the bureau and advanced a central goal of the conservative legal movement: limiting the power of independent agencies.
The vote was 7 to 2, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing the majority opinion.
Had the bureau lost, the court’s ruling might have cast doubt on every regulation and enforcement action it had taken in its 13 years of existence, including ones concerning mortgages, credit cards, consumer loans and banking.
The central question in the case was whether the way Congress chose to fund the bureau had violated the appropriations clause of the Constitution, which says that “no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.”
Justice Thomas said the mechanism was constitutional.
“Under the appropriations clause,” he wrote, “an appropriation is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes. The statute that provides the bureau’s funding meets these requirements. We therefore conclude that the bureau’s funding mechanism does not violate the appropriations clause.”….
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The case, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America, No. 22-448, was brought by two trade groups representing payday lenders. They challenged a regulation limiting the number of times lenders can try to withdraw funds from borrowers’ bank accounts. The Fifth Circuit struck down the regulation, saying it was “wholly drawn through the agency’s unconstitutional funding scheme.”…
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