Supreme Court says CFPB's leadership structure is unconstitutional

Sauce: https://www.axios.com/supreme-court-cfpb-leadership-structure-ruling-08c64b8b-be88-4b81-ae35-d3b06ef2af91.html

The Supreme Court said the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional, but that the agency can keep operating under new rules.

Why it matters: The court’s ruling will make it easier for future presidents to fire the leader of the powerful watchdog agency, making it more subject to political vicissitudes.

Details: The CFPB was conceived by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), before her days in elected office, and created by Congress in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse.

Congress created a somewhat unusual leadership structure for the bureau: a single director, rather than a board, who serves a fixed five-year term and can only be fired by the president for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."

Critics said that gave the director too much power, arguing that he or she should be fireable for any reason, like Cabinet officials and other senior political appointees.

The Supreme Court agreed, ruling that presidents must be able to fire CFPB directors at will.

Between the lines: The unusual leadership structure was designed to prevent the gridlock that a board of directors could produce, while also providing some continuity from one administration to the next.

Today’s ruling will undermine those goals, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that terrible a blow to the agency.

The court had an opportunity, if it wanted, to strike down the entire CFPB, but did not go that far. The CFPB will now function more similarly to other parts of the executive branch.

The short-term implications are minimal. The agency currently has an acting director, who hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate and could therefore be fired at will even without today’s ruling.

Read the ruling.

Ruling posted on document cloud: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6959228-19-7-n6io.html

=BUILD THAT WALL=

BTFO tree huggers edition SCOTUS declines to take up their whine

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge by four environmental groups to the authority of President Donald Trump's administration to build his promised wall along the border with Mexico.

The justices turned away an appeal by the groups of a federal judge's ruling that rejected their claims that the administration had unlawfully undertaken border wall projects in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas harmful to plant and animal life. The groups had argued that the 1996 law under which the administration is building the wall gave too much power to the executive branch in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The groups that sued are the Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Defenders of Wildlife and the Southwest Environmental Center. They said the wall construction efforts would harm plants, wildlife habitats and endangered species including the jaguar, Mexican gray wolf and bighorn sheep.

The border wall is one of Trump's signature 2016 campaign promises, part of his hardline policies toward illegal and legal immigration. The Republican president has vowed to build a wall along the entire 2,000-mile (3,200-km) U.S.-Mexico border. He promised that Mexico would pay for it. Mexico has refused.

The 1996 law, aimed at combating illegal immigration, gave the U.S. government authority to build border barriers and preempt legal requirements such as environmental rules. It also limited the kinds of legal challenges that could be brought.

The environmental groups argued that the law was unconstitutional because it gave too much power to the executive branch - in this case the Department of Homeland Security - to get around laws like the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act without congressional input.

Progress toward building the wall has been limited because Congress has not provided the funds Trump has sought, leading him to divert money - with the blessing of the Supreme Court - from the U.S. military and other parts of the federal government.

Sauce: https://news.yahoo.com/u-supreme-court-spurns-environmental-134639974.html