On October 11, 2016 the D.C. Circuit in PHH Corporation v.
CFPB, No. 15-1177, struck down the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau's (CFPB) leadership structure as
unconstitutional. In short, the court ruled that Congress may
not create a powerful independent agency led by a single director,
rather than a multi-member commission, such as the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) or the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission (FERC). But rather than abolishing the CFPB
altogether, the court remedied the constitutional problem by
removing the CFPB's independence — that is, giving the
President the power to fire the CFPB Director at will. Thus,
so long as the President and CFPB Director are on the same page
politically, the CFPB can (and almost certainly will) continue to
act just as it did before. The court's ruling also
invalidated, on statutory grounds, a CFPB enforcement action aimed
at mortgage-reinsurance practices. But that ruling is
unlikely to have broad
