@jon-nyc said in SCOTUS approves CFPB funding:
This one went 7-2. Clarence Thomas writing the majority opinion.
Which The Hill chose not to mention until the 6th paragraph,
Gorsuch, Alito break from conservatives
Two of the Supreme Court’s most conservative justices broke away from other right-leaning members of the nation’s high court in a decision to preserve the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — but a third led the majority opinion that sided with the Biden administration.
Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the Supreme Court’s 7-2 vote upholding the agency’s funding mechanism as constitutional, suggesting that the decision undercuts the most “complete and effectual weapon” at Congress’s disposal: its power of the purse.
“Unfortunately, today’s decision turns the Appropriations Clause into a minor vestige,” Alito wrote. “The Court upholds a novel statutory scheme under which the powerful Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) may bankroll its own agenda without any congressional control or oversight.”
Unlike most other federal agencies, which receive funding through annual appropriations, Congress gave the CFPB the power to draw funds from the Federal Reserve System that its director has deemed “reasonably necessary to carry out.” That funding mechanism has long made the CFPB a target of Republican attacks purporting lawmakers have too little control over the agency.
“The Framers would be shocked, even horrified, by this scheme,” Alito wrote.
A separate and also notable break among the justices is that the majority opinion, which sided with the Biden administration, was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, known as one of the Supreme Court’s most conservative justices. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and the high court’s three liberals.
