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On February 27, 2023, the Supreme Court granted the petition for a writ of certiorari.” The Court should issue its final decision by 2024.

The CFPBis a highly politicized, damaging, and utterly unaccountable federal agency. It is unconstitutional. Congress should abolish the CFPB and reverse Dodd-Frank Section 1061, thus returning the consumer protection function of the CFPB to banking regulators®™ and the Federal Trade Commission. Provided the Supreme Court affirms the Fifth Circuit holding in Community Financial Services Association of America, the next conservative President should order the immediate dissolution of the agency—pull down its prior rules, regulations and guidance, return its staff to their prior agencies and its building to the General Services Administration.

Until this can be accomplished, however, Congress should:

• Ensure that any civil penalty funds not used to recompense wronged consumers go to the Department of the Treasury. The funds should not be retained by the Bureau to be dispensed at the pleasure of the Director— potentially to political actors. Moreover, the CFPB should not have a financial incentive to impose penalties.

• Repeal Dodd-Frank Section 1071. This section, which relates to smallbusiness data collection, imposes requirements on financial institutions’ lending to small firms, raises costs, and limits small businesses’ access to capital.**

• Require that no CFPB funds are spent on enforcement actions that are not based on a rulemaking that complies with the Administrative Procedure Act.”

• Require that respondents in administrative actions be allowed to elect whether an adjudication occurs in an administrative law court

or an ordinary Article III federal court.*°

• ©6Specify the nature of “deceptive, unfair, and abusive” practices to define the scope of the CFPB mission more precisely.