Senior United States District Judge Loretta Preska rules the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional

Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, sitting at Manhattan, has ruled the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be unconstitutional, thus dismissing them as plaintiffs in a lawsuit.

It was a small part of a much larger ruling denying motions to dismiss by the defendants in the case.

http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/cases/show.php?db=special&id=634

The above is the link to Preska’s ruling. The relevant part of her ruling starts at page 99 of 104.

Judge Preska relies on the dissents of United States Circuit Judges Henderson and Kavanaugh to an en banc decision of the DC Circuit to uphold the structure of the CFPB. Because the SDNY is in the Second Circuit, decisions of the DC Circuit are not binding upon the SDNY. However, Preska is free to rely on either a decision or dissent of another Circuit Court and in this case, she has relied upon dissents from the DC Circuit.

The above is the link to the en banc DC Circuit decision. It is a lengthy PDF. It starts off with the Opinion of the Court by United States Circuit Judge Nina Pillard. The Henderson dissent starts at about page 122 of the PDF file. The Kavanaugh dissent starts at about page 174 of the PDF file and continues to about 4 pages from the end of the document. A dissent by Judge Randolph covers the last 4 pages, but Judge Preska did not cite that dissent. She did cite both the Henderson and Kavanaugh dissents.

Essentially the crux of the issue is that the Director of the CFPB has tremendous power and discretion, but is removable only for cause, not at will. I agree with Judge Preska’s ruling and the dissenters on the DC Circuit. The CFPB director should be able to be fired by the President at will and until that change is made by Congress, the CFPB should be put on ice. Judge Preska’s ruling effectively puts the CFPB on ice for the time being.

I in theory agree with this ruling.

I for one was not in favor of the CFPB’s ruling that mandatory arbitration was not legal. I’ve maintained that if a consumer agrees to something that is their own fault and of their own volition. There was a another forum member here that steadfastly argued that is isn’t fair to consumers to be forced to accept MA, to which I repeatedly replied, no one forced them to accept the agreement and that said consumer isn’t entitled to a particular service at the terms they wished the contract to be.

Bottom line no government agency should exist without checks and balances.

You can also add oversight to that list. No agency of government should exist without oversight.

That’s good news. Their lack of oversight allowed them an authority that no institution in the US should have. We are a nation of checks and balances but the CFPB had none.

That person was me.

I never disputed that!