THERE IS NO 4TH BRANCH (EXCEPT KIND-OF THE FED):

Worst of all, the CFPB exercises significant executive power, in addition to elements of legislative and judicial functions, in its field of consumer-finance regulation. This creates serious constitutional problems for an agency that is unaccountable to the political branches -- and, thus, to the people. The Constitution does not permit the unaccountable CFPB to exert such significant and varied power over an important aspect of American life.

Numerous lawsuits have rightly called the CFPB into question. In 2016, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, when he was still a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, joined that attack. In PHH Corp. v. CFPB, he wrote that "other than the president, the director of the CFPB is the single most powerful official in the entire United States government, at least when measured in terms of unilateral power." In his opinion in that case, Kavanaugh found the CFPB to be unconstitutional, before the "nuclear" D.C. Circuit reversed him en banc.

As long as the CFPB's constitutionality remains in doubt, businesses and individuals will struggle with how to conduct themselves in relation to the agency's mandates. And that goes for all the other ostensibly independent agencies whose regulatory tentacles have entangled the American economy in recent decades -- such as the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found unconstitutional just last month.

Earlier last week, the Supreme Court heard argument regarding a related constitutional defect with the financial-oversight board that Congress created to restructure Puerto Rico's debt. As I wrote in discussing that case, "constitutional structure is important; it's what ultimately secures our liberties and ensures that we have the rule of law, rather than man -- whether that be the president or the group of men and women in Congress, or both in collusion against our founding document."

Seila Law is thus a great case for resolving some of the problems of constitutional structure that recent legislation has introduced into our government. The Supreme Court should hold that the CFPB has insufficient checks on its power and send Congress back to the drawing board.

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