In the first of what are becoming regular clashes between
Democratic state attorneys general and the new President, the
attorneys general of Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa,
Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York,
North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and the
District of Columbia sought to intervene in federal court
proceedings to defend the constitutionality of the Consumer
Financial Protection Act ("CFPA"), which created the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB"), currently
headed by Richard Cordray. Cordray is a former Attorney General of
the State of Ohio.
On October 11, 2016, a divided panel of the Court of Appeals for
the D.C. Circuit held that the CFPB as currently structured is
unconstitutional. In particular, the CFPA provided that the
director of the CFPB is removable by the President only for cause,
as opposed to serving at will. The CFPA's drafters envisioned
this would increase the
