Court says CFPB unconstitutionality argument strays from Supreme Court ruling in Seila

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

On January 13, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania denied a student loan servicer’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, ruling that the servicer’s argument that the CFPB is unconstitutional “strays afar” from the U.S. Supreme Court’s finding in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB. The servicer previously argued that the Supreme Court’s finding in Seila (covered by a Buckley Special Alert)—which held that that the director’s for-cause removal provision was unconstitutional but was severable from the statute establishing the CFPB—meant that the Bureau “never had constitutional authority to bring this action and that the filing of [the] lawsuit was unauthorized and unlawful.” The servicer also claimed that the statute of limitations governing the CFPB’s claims prior to the decision in Seila had expired, arguing that Director Kathy Kraninger’s July 2020 ratification came too late. However, the court determined, among other things, that “[n]othing in Seila indicates that the Supreme Court intended that its holding should result in a finding that this lawsuit is void ab initio.” The court further noted that the servicer’s assertion that the Bureau “‘never had constitutional authority to bring this action’ is belied by Seila’s implicit finding that the CFPB always had the authority to act, despite the Supreme Court’s finding that the removal protection was unconstitutional.”