“Big banks and their Republican allies have been trying to kill the CFPB for years, and the Trump administration is hoping the right-wing, pro-corporate Supreme Court will help. I’ve got news for them: Like it or not, the CFPB is constitutional,” Warren wrote on Twitter.

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Republicans accuse the agency of overreach. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) concluded a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by saying, “The CFPB has eroded freedom, trampled due process and killed jobs. It must go.”

After House Democrats filed a brief with the Supreme Court urging the justices not to take up the case, the high court agreed Oct. 18 to hear the matter that is cited as Seila Law LLC v. CFPB.

The California-based law firm had refused to honor CFPB’s request for documents and challenged the entity’s structure, claiming it was unconstitutional because its director, unlike the typical federal official, isn’t accountable to the elected president of the United States who appointed him or her.

Seila Law, which assists clients in obtaining relief from consumer debt, stated in its petition to the court that in early 2017, the CFPB “issued a civil investigative demand … as part of an investigation into whether [the law firm] violated federal consumer-financial law.” The firm asked the agency to withdraw its demand, and the agency refused.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in 2016 that the structure of the CFPB was unconstitutional. The director of the agency “is the single most powerful official in the entire U.S. Government, other than the President … [and] within his jurisdiction, the Director of the CFPB can be considered even more powerful than the President,” wrote then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who is now an associate justice on the Supreme Court. The full D.C. circuit overturned the ruling in 2018.

Insulating the agency, which was given sweeping powers, from democratic control was an intentional part of the CFPB’s design. It was created in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to guard against consumer fraud and abuse in the financial sector. The statute blocks the president from dismissing its director, who has to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, before that person’s five-year term lapses, unless the termination is for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

The CFPB’s unusual funding mechanism also keeps the agency independent. Although it’s allowed to seek funding from Congress, the agency is excluded from the normal congressional appropriations process, and instead receives most of the money it needs to operate from the Federal Reserve System.

Texas Solicitor General Kyle D. Hawkins filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of his own state, along with Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia, arguing the structure of the CFPB violates the separation of powers doctrine.

“The Constitution forbids entrusting concentrated, unchecked authority to a sole, unaccountable director of an administrative agency charged with wielding executive power,” the brief states.

(Excerpt from The Epoch Times. Article by Matthew Vadum.)