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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

Case Update: PHH Corp. v CFPB

Courts PHH v. CFPB Consumer Finance Federal Issues RESPA DOJ Mortgages Litigation Single-Director Structure

Courts

March 31 marked the deadline for the CFPB to file its brief in response to PHH Corporation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s en banc review of the CFPB’s enforcement action against PHH for alleged violations of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). As previously covered by InfoBytes, the PHH case began as a challenge to a 2015 penalty the CFPB levied against PHH, which was collected as part of what the CFPB deemed – a “captive reinsurance arrangement.” In fighting the penalty, PHH called into question the Bureau’s constitutionality and in October 2016, a panel of the D.C. Circuit concluded both that the CFPB misinterpreted RESPA, and also that its single-Director structure violated the constitutional separation of powers. On February 16 of this year, however, the D.C. Circuit granted the CFPB’s petition for rehearing en banc of the October 2015 panel decision. In granting en banc review, the court sought guidance from the parties on three specific questions: 

  • Is the Bureau’s structure unconstitutional because its Director may be removed only for cause, and if so, is the appropriate remedy to sever the for-cause removal provision from the Consumer Financial Protection Act?; 
  • May the Court avoid addressing the constitutionality of the Bureau’s structure if it adopts the panel’s holdings as to PHH’s liability under RESPA (and should it adopt those holdings)?; and
  • What is the appropriate disposition of this case if this Court concludes that the SEC’s administrative law judges are “inferior officers” under Lucia v. SEC? 

Oral argument is scheduled for May 24. This Court has allocated 30 minutes per side for the argument and, as discussed further below, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed an unopposed motion seeking ten minutes of argument time for the United States at the May 24 en banc hearing.

CFPB’s Brief. On March 31, the CFPB filed its brief for the en banc rehearing in PHH Corp. v CFPB urging the D.C. Circuit  to uphold the constitutionality of the Bureau’s single-director, independent-agency structure. According to the CFPB, neither the Bureau’s current single-director arrangement, nor the “for-cause” restriction on the President’s removal powers prevents the Executive branch from ensuring that the nation’s laws are implemented. Specifically, the brief explains that “[t]he President has no less control over a single-director agency than he does over a multi-member commission.” The brief also sets forth the Bureau’s position that, even “[i]f this Court determines that the Bureau’s structure is unconstitutional,” the appropriate remedy is not to invalidate the agency in its entirety, but rather to “sever the for-cause removal provision” of the Dodd-Frank Act (the Act), thereby allowing the President to remove the Bureau’s director for any reason. In addition to addressing the constitutional question, the CFPB also reiterated its argument that its RESPA interpretation is correct, that PHH and its affiliates violated RESPA, and that the Act’s statute of limitations does not apply to the Bureau’s administrative enforcement authority. And, at the direction of the court, the brief also addressed the potential effect of a decision in Lucia v. SEC that a SEC administrative law judge (ALJ) was an inferior officer under the Constitution. The ALJ used by the CFPB in the PHH enforcement proceeding was, in fact, borrowed from the SEC. Notably, Lucia v. SEC is scheduled to be argued immediately before PHH Corp. v. CFPB, on May 24, 2017.

Amicus Curiae in Support of the CFPB. Also filed on March 31 were seven amicus curiae briefs, each of which offered arguments, both legal and non-legal, in favor of the CFPB’s continued existence as an independent regulator:

PHH’s Brief. Briefing for PHH and amicus curiae briefs in support of the mortgage lender were due on March 17. In its opening brief and addendum, PHH focused on the separation-of-powers and remedy issues, raising the RESPA interpretation issue principally in support of the claim that the CFPB’s unconstitutional structure rendered the Bureau dangerously unaccountable. The New Jersey mortgage lender noted, among other things, that Congress has no ability to cut the agency’s budget and the President cannot remove its director without cause. As a general matter, the mortgage lender has argued that the Bureau’s creation “placed massive, unchecked federal power in the hands of a single, unaccountable director” and that “[t]he director alone rules over large swaths of the field of consumer finance, subject to virtually no restraints from the representative branches.”

DOJ BriefAs previously covered by InfoBytes, the DOJ filed its own brief in the case on March 17, arguing in support of the D.C. Circuit panel’s initial ruling and proposed remedy. The DOJ brief stated, among other things, that, “[w]hile we do not agree with all of the reasoning in the panel’s opinion,” the DOJ agrees with the panel’s conclusion that “a removal restriction for the Director of the CFPB is an unwarranted limitation on the President’s executive power” and that “the panel correctly concluded … that the proposed remedy for the constitutional violation is to sever the provision limiting the President’s authority to remove the CFPB’s Director, not to declare the entire agency and its operations unconstitutional.”  As  covered recently on InfoBytes, the DOJ presented arguments that differed both from the CFPB and from the positions previously presented by the Obama Administration in briefing submitted on behalf of the United States back in December. 

Also, as mentioned above, on April 3, the DOJ filed an unopposed motion seeking ten minutes of argument time for the United States at the May 24 en banc hearing.

Amicus Curiae in Support of PHH. The March 10 deadline in the en banc proceeding also brought about the filing of seven amicus curiae briefs in support of PHH’s claims and/or defenses. Six of these filings took the position that the Bureau’s current structure violates separation-of-powers principles:

A seventh—filed by a combined group of 13 banking and residential real estate-related organizations—argued in support of the company’s interpretation of the RESPA. According to this brief, the CFPB incorrectly changed a long-standing RESPA interpretation that permitted the use of captive reinsurance companies under appropriate circumstances. The changed interpretation was contrary to the Act and to the CFPB’s own regulation. The brief also argued that the Bureau improperly changed the interpretation and applied the new interpretation in an enforcement action without proper notice.