Better Markets says the recent Supreme Court decision in the Seila Law v. CFPB case is simply another anti-consumer, pro-predator and pro-corporate decision that reduces the independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

Dennis Kelleher, President and CEO of Better Markets, says that the court’s ruling earlier this month overruled Congress’s decision to create a “strong, independent CFPB to protect financial consumers who were ripped off by a predatory financial industry in the years before the 2008 crash.”

Congress created the CFPB as an independent agency under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Financial Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Under the Obama administration, the CFPB returned almost $12 billion to nearly 30 million ripped-off Americans.

“Finally, there was a very effective cop on the Wall Street beat and the financial industry was furious,” Kelleher says. “It wanted to keep that money in their pockets and not return it to their victims.”

Since the CFPB’s creation in 2010, the industry has spent enormous amounts of time and money buying political allies and funding attacks on the CFPB. The Supreme Court’s decision is the return on that investment, says Kelleher.

“However, while the Court removed the protection for the director, the CFPB remains intact and is still mandated by the law to protect financial consumers not financial predators,” he says. “It is long past time for Trump’s CFPB Director to follow the law.”