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Victory! On May 16, 2024, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the CFPB’s funding structure.
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On May 15, 2023, NWLC—along with Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and fourteen other organizations committed to ending discrimination against people of color, including those with low incomes—filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America. In this case, the lower court held that the statute providing funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) violates the Appropriations Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Our brief urges the Supreme Court to reverse and hold that the CFPB’s funding structure is consistent with the plain text of the Appropriations Clause.
Our amicus brief also explains why the CFPB’s constitutionality matters: because it is integral to the federal government’s efforts to stop predatory and discriminatory lending practices. The CFPB was created in the wake of the subprime mortgage foreclosure crisis to make sure that such a crisis would not happen again. The agency is critical to counteracting the long history of state-sanctioned financial discrimination in the United States. Financial discrimination, while now illegal, remains all too pervasive today. Our brief therefore urges the Court to uphold the CFPB’s constitutionality, preserving its ability to protect consumers from racial discrimination and deceptive lending practices.