Washington, D.C. — Following oral arguments today in the Supreme Court case CFPB v. CFSA — the payday lending lobby’s legal challenge to the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding structure — the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“This case is a pivotal moment in the fundamental fight over who has power in our country: lawbreaking businesses, or the people and their elected government,” said Morgan Harper, Director of Policy & Advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Payday lenders and other financial predators don’t want to comply with the law, and they are willing to bring down our whole financial system to kneecap the financial regulators that oversee them. The Supreme Court must reject their efforts, overturn CFPB v. CFSA, and preserve the CFPB’s ability to protect American consumers and small businesses.”

“Payday lenders are begging the Court to bulldoze the economy — all so they can dismantle our financial regulators and freely cheat hardworking Americans,” said Shahid Naeem, Senior Policy Analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project. “The Appropriations Clause argument isn’t just novel, it’s ludicrous. Time after time, our nation’s courts have upheld the CFPB’s independent funding structure. The Supreme Court must do the same.”

Congress established the CFPB in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, tasking it with protecting Americans from abuse in the consumer finance industry.  In 2022, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a CFPB rule protecting borrowers from abusive payday lenders, citing its unconstitutional funding structure, a structure it shares with the Federal Reserve and numerous other federal agencies. If not overturned by the Supreme Court, the ruling would sow chaos in financial markets and void countless actions taken by the CFPB to fight wrongdoing by powerful corporate giants like big banks, credit card firms, and credit reporting companies—actions which have so far resulted in over $17 billion returned to Americans.

As an Economic Liberties and Democracy Forward brief recently revealed, a possible adverse decision also carries grave implications for critical financial regulators, and for the economy as a whole. Adoption of this new Appropriations Clause theory to the funding of federal agencies and programs could undermine any agency or program not funded in annual appropriations bills. Litigation against other agencies like the Federal Reserve, OCC, FDIC, and other financial regulatory bodies could threaten core pillars of our economic and financial regulatory system, especially after a series of bank collapses created turmoil this year in financial markets.

Under Director Rohit Chopra, the CFPB has held scammers like Wells Fargo accountable, returning billions of Americans’ hard-earned money to their bank accounts; fought back against Wall Street and Big Tech’s discriminatory and anti-competitive behavior; ensured violating the law can no longer be written off as just a “cost of doing business;” and restored financial freedom to millions of Americans held hostage by the credit reporting cartel.

Read The War on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Community Financial Services of America v. CFPB here.

Learn more about the CFPB’s accomplishments under Director Chopra’s leadership here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.