Kraninger resigns; Uejio to lead CFPB while Chopra awaits confirmation

Federal Issues CFPB CFPB Succession Seila Law Dodd-Frank

On January 20, Kathy Kraninger resigned from her position as CFPB director and newly sworn-in President Biden announced that Dave Uejio would serve as acting director until permanent leadership is confirmed by the U.S. Senate. President Biden officially nominated Rohit Chopra as the permanent director of the Bureau.

Uejio has been with the Bureau since 2012, and prior to his appointment as acting director, he has served as the Bureau’s Chief Strategy Officer since 2015. Chopra, who is currently a Democratic Commissioner of the FTC, previously served as the Bureau’s first student loan ombudsman and assistant director of the Office for Students before leaving the Bureau in 2015.

Kraninger’s resignation is a notable departure from the Bureau’s original structure, as outlined in Dodd-Frank, which called for a single director, appointed to a five-year term and only removable by the president for cause (i.e., for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office”). As previously covered by a Buckley Special Alert, in June 2020, the Supreme Court, in a plurality opinion in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, held that the CFPB’s statutory structure violates the constitutional separation of powers by restricting the president’s ability to remove the director. The Court remedied the constitutional violation by severing the “for cause” removal language from the remainder of the statute. When Kraninger submitted her resignation on President Biden’s Inauguration Day, she stated it was in “support of the Constitutional prerogative of the President to appoint senior officials within the government who support the President’s policy priorities…”