Supreme Court Issues Rare Good Decision
By 
I can’t say that I saw this coming:
The Supreme Court rejected a challenge on Thursday to the way the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is funded, one that could have hobbled the bureau and advanced a central goal of the conservative legal movement: limiting the power of independent agencies.
The vote was 7 to 2, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing the majority opinion.
Had the bureau lost, the court’s ruling might have cast doubt on every regulation and enforcement action it had taken in its 13 years of existence, including ones concerning mortgages, credit cards, consumer loans and banking.
The central question in the case was whether the way Congress chose to fund the bureau had violated the appropriations clause of the Constitution, which says that “no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.”
Justice Thomas said the mechanism was constitutional.
“Under the appropriations clause,” he wrote, “an appropriation is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes.”
“The statute that provides the bureau’s funding meets these requirements,” he added. “We therefore conclude that the bureau’s funding mechanism does not violate the appropriations clause.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented.
The business far right types are outraged today given how much they truly loathe the CFPB, Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild.
I did figure there were 5 votes for this, at least, though I didn’t pay any attention to oral arguments. I will let Scott or others who are legal scholars expand on why this happened. But for Clarence Thomas to write the decision in the rare case where he is not as insane as Alito or Gorsuch is remarkable. I will also note that this demonstrates why every justice counts, even when you are down 3-6. Not all Republicans are exactly the same on every issue, not even Thomas and Alito.
As always, more from SCOTUSBLOG.