This may not have made your local news last night, but American consumers took what could be a major hit this week.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals* ruled — wrongly — that the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional.

Some history:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created as part of the landmark Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 — after the Big Banks’ reckless greed sparked the Great Recession.

The agency was initially proposed by Elizabeth Warren, then a Harvard professor and now a U.S. senator.

Public Citizen was instrumental in pushing for the creation of the CFPB.

That included an insistence that the agency be funded independently of Congress’ annual appropriations circus — which is far too susceptible to lobbying and campaign cash from Wall Street and other deep-pocketed financial enterprises.

Congress agreed, and intentionally set up the CFPB to be funded through the Federal Reserve, rather than via annual congressional appropriations.

And for over a decade, the CFPB has been working exactly as intended — recovering billions for everyday American consumers and restricting some of the worst impulses of financial companies.

But then a trade group for predatory payday lenders came along and challenged the very structure of the CFPB — even though that structure is intentional and was approved by a majority in both the House and Senate when the agency was created in the first place.

Public Citizen issued this statement last night:

The Fifth Circuit’s dangerously misguided and outrageous decision jeopardizes the most important consumer protection agency created in the last 50 years along with the rules, guidelines, enforcement actions, and consumer education that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued and undertaken.

The decision ignores long-established and long-accepted practice of funding financial regulatory agencies, and the prior review of many other courts, in order to decree that the funding mechanism of the CFPB is unconstitutional. If upheld, this decision is a gift to scammers and rip-off artists, payday lenders and Big Banks.

If it stands, it will go down as one of the most anti-consumer court rulings in history. It must be reversed.

Click now to add your name as a citizen co-signer of our official statement addressing the Fifth Circuit’s absurd ruling.

Thanks for taking action.

For progress,

- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen

*Our judicial system has 11 circuit courts. Each one covers several states. Collectively, they are the next level below the United States Supreme Court, the highest court in the land.

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