Oct 18, 2019

The Supreme Court will decide if the CFPB is unconstitutional

The U.S. Supreme Court building

Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The Supreme Court announced today that it will decide whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren — is unconstitutional. It could hand down its ruling just weeks before Democrats' 2020 convention.

The big picture: The CFPB has a single director whom the president cannot fire at will. Critics say that's a violation of the president's constitutional powers. The court will have three options: uphold the CFPB's structure, rule that the director must be fireable (as Justice Brett Kavanaugh ruled previously), or throw out the CFPB altogether.

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