WASHINGTON–The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari Before Judgment filed by a check cashing company.
In its petition, All American Check Cashing was seeking to have the Supreme Court hear its interlocutory appeal of a district court’s ruling that had upheld the CFPB’s constitutionality rather than wait for a ruling on its appeal from the Fifth Circuit.
As CUToday.info reported earlier, the Supreme Court has already accepted a certiorari petition from Seila Law, which is challenging the constitutionality of the CFPB. All American argued that since it filed its petition before the Supreme Court chose to hear the Seila Law case, its case at a very minimum should be heard as a companion case.
All American’s lawyers argued that unlike Seila Law, its case “squarely present[ed]” the question of whether, even if the agency’s structure is unconstitutional, former Acting Director Mulvaney’s ratification of the CFPB’s challenged action cured any constitutional defect. Although the CFPB made the ratification argument in Seila Law, it was not addressed by either the district court or the Ninth Circuit (which both held that the CFPB’s structure is constitutional), noted one analysis.
The Core Issue
In the Seila Law case, the issue is whether the agency’s single-director who can only be removed for cause violates the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution. In its order granting Seila Law’s petition, the Supreme Court directed the parties to also brief and argue the question whether the Dodd-Frank Act’s for-cause removal provision can be severed from the Act if the Bureau’s structure is found to be unconstitutional.
The Ninth Circuit had previously upheld the CFPB’s constitutionality.