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Supreme Court sides with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, spurning a conservative attack

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-cfpb-consumer-protection-9f30de9bbfa5b25a47804b101fb998e8

The Supreme Court has rejected a conservative-led attack that could've undermined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Supreme Court sides with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, spurning a conservative attack

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a conservative-led attack that could have undermined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The justices ruled 7-2 that the way the agency is funded does not violate the Constitution, reversing a lower court. The CFPB was created after the 2008 financial crisis to regulate mortgages, car loans and other consumer finance.

23 comments

CaptainPedantic

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Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

ChicoSuave

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Honestly shocked Clarence Thomas thought other people needed financial protection. Or cared about other people at all.

evatronic

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He doesn't.

This is just his hall pass vote to make him appear less of an ideologue for later, when he proceeds to fuck the country over for Trump.

Sturgist

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Even a broken clock is right twice a day....

With Clarence Thomas it's once every few decades.

HuddaBudda

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7-2

I bet, can guess who those 2 were without even looking.

Justice Clarence Thomas reached back to the earliest days of the Constitution in his majority opinion to note that “the Bureau’s funding mechanism fits comfortably with the First Congress’ appropriations practice.”

Hmmm..... surprising.... maybe public pressure does work.

Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, Thomas’ colleagues in the court’s conservative bloc, dissented. “The Court upholds a novel statutory scheme under which the powerful Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) may bankroll its own agenda without any congressional control or oversight,” Alito wrote.

No more powerful then the billionaires that get to bribe officials and run the show.

FlyingSquid

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Not a big surprise about Alito and Gorsuch, but who bribed Clarence Thomas to do the right thing?

hddsx

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I thought Gorsuch was one of the more sane ones? Is there a website to track votes?

ChonkyOwlbear

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Gorsuch has a libertarian streak, which makes him deviate from some of the more authoritarian conservative positions. It unfortunately also means that he hates government oversight.

redhorsejacket

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I'm no legal scholar, but my read on Thomas is that he is, at the end of the day, a constitutional originalist. He is also a scumbag, but the opinions of his that I've read tend towards similar things: i.e. what does the Constitution/Founding Fathers say about this issue? Of course, most of the time, that ends up generating some wacko opinions because he's generally unwilling to deviate from at 1700s era mindset. In fact, he seems to immerse himself in that mindset in order to form his opinions.

For example, if you read the majority opinion he wrote, Thomas defines the case very narrowly on Constitutional grounds. Basically, the payday loans companies argue that the consumer protection agency is in violation of the Constitution because, unlike most other federal agencies, its director is imbued (by Congress, mind you) with the power to withdraw up to a stuatory cap of funds from the Federal Reserve every year "as [they] determine fit to meet the agencies operating expenses". The loan companies say that this is in violation with the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution, which states, " no money shall be drawn from the Treasury except in consequence of Appropriations made by Law".

So, Thomas's approach to this disagreement is to determine what an "Appropriation" is, as it might have been defined by the people who wrote the clause. To do so, he, I shit you not, consults a dictionary from the period, like the intro to a lazy term paper ("Merriam-Webster defines appropriation as...). He also gets into the historical case law of Britain, rather extensively, as he believes (probably accurately, frankly) that that's the best way to understand what the authors of the constitutional had conceived as they wrote the document.

After all of this, he winds up with several examples of executive agencies which do/did not fund themselves via the standard appropriations bill process (Customs Offices and Post Offices being the primary examples used). So, he concludes that it's clear that the Founding Fathers had a broader view of how to find the government than ONLY annual appropriations bills, even if the literal text seems to indicate otherwise.

Also, he points out that the whole thing kinda falls apart in the sense that the creation of this agency was an act of Congress, with stuatory funding regulations drawn up by Congress, which was then signed by Obama into law. So, Congress made a law that said this particular agency is allowed to bypass the appropriations clause in x y z ways. Thomas has a stack of historical records which show that this was something the founders not only were aware of, but actively sanctioned via how the Post Office and Customs offices were set up at their establishment. So, he has no choice but to conclude that this agency is in line with what Jefferson et al had in mind. Thus, tough shit payday loans, bribe a congressman to change the law because ain't shit can be done from a judicial perspective. Which, I imagine is probably what Thomas told these companies' bag men when they showed up to secure his opinion.

blargerer

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I know there have been some sketchy instances or things that look like bribery (and may very well have been bribery) but in general I think people massively overstate the effects of bribery in politics. These people are crazy and believe the things they say, that's why the money put them into the position they are in. This does mean that they do principled things all the time, the foundation of their beliefs is just fucked and incomprehensible to normal people.

FlyingSquid

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In politics? Yes. When it comes to Clarence Thomas in specific, no. It is very clear that he can be and has been bribed.

MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown

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These people are crazy and believe the things they say, that's why the money put them into the position they are in

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

~ Upton Sinclair

Blackbeard

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Wait, so now Alito gives a shit about oversight??? Guess it's "oversight for thee, but not for me."

stoly

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The DEA literally gets funding based on arrests and that’s without oversight. Hmm.

some_guy

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I was actually shocked. I can't remember him coming down on what I thought was the right side of any case since I've started paying attention.

FlyingSquid

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Holy fuck, I absolutely did not expect this outcome at all. The CFPB is so necessary, so I assumed the court was going to throw it out. This makes me more optimistic about Chevron.

FireTower

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Here's the case's name that the author felt wasn't relevant to the story and a link so you can actually read the opinion for anyone interested:

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Assn. of America, Ltd., 601 U.S. ___ (2024)

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/601/22-448/

redhorsejacket

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Thank you for your service

ZoopZeZoop

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Wow! A rare decision in favor of the consumer! In general, it probably should have some sort of oversight elsewhere, but that should probably wait until we make it illegal to have the bribery that goes on every day in Congress.

If the R's take back the White House, this will probably be on the chopping block.

grue

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Considering this unexpected win plus a few times when I expected the liberal justices to dissent but they didn't, I'm starting to wonder if there's some deal-making going on behind the scenes.

FlyingSquid

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There's always deal-making going on behind the scenes.

DaDragon

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It’s almost universally the one constant that can be relied on under any circumstance

JaymesRS

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This announcement is entirely part of a plan trying to build up good will before ruling Trump immune from everything.