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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

5th Circuit: CFPB structure is constitutional

Courts U.S. Supreme Court CFPB Single-Director Structure Seila Law Appellate Fifth Circuit

Courts

On March 3, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB (covered by InfoBytes here), a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the CFPB’s single-director structure is constitutional, finding no constitutional defect with allowing the director of the Bureau to only be fired for cause. As previously covered by InfoBytes, the CFPB filed a complaint against two Mississippi-based payday loan and check cashing companies for allegedly violating the Consumer Financial Protection Act’s prohibition on unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices. In March 2018, a district court denied the payday lenders’ motion for judgment on the pleadings, rejecting the argument that the structure of the CFPB is unconstitutional and that the CFPB’s claims violate due process. The 5th Circuit agreed to hear an interlocutory appeal on the constitutionality question, and subsequently, the payday lenders filed an unchallenged petition requesting an initial hearing en banc. (Covered by InfoBytes here.)

On appeal, the majority upheld the district court’s decision that the Bureau is not unconstitutional based on its single-director structure. “The payday lenders argue that the structure of the CFPB denies the Executive Branch its due because the Bureau is led by a single director removable by the President only for cause,” the majority wrote. “We find no support for this argument in constitutional text or in Supreme Court decisions and uphold the constitutionality of the CFPB’s structure, as did the D.C. and Ninth [C]ircuits.” The majority compared the case to the D.C. Circuit’s en banc decision in PHH v. CFPB (covered by a Buckley Special Alert) and the 9th Circuit’s decision in CFPB v. Seila Law LLC (covered by InfoBytes here), both of which upheld the Bureau’s structure. The majority also distinguished a 2018 ruling from the 5th Circuit sitting en banc, which held the FHFA’s single-director structure unconstitutional (covered by InfoBytes here). This provoked a strong dissent charging that the majority had “suddenly discover[ed] that stare decisis is for suckers.”