Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Thursday celebrated the Supreme Court's decision to reject a GOP challenge to the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
“The Supreme Court of the United States followed the law, and the CFPB will stay,” Warren said outside the Supreme Court.
“This is so great, this news is fantastic,” she said.
Thursday's court decision upholds the agency's funding mechanism as constitutional. The 7-2 vote ends a battle that posed the biggest legal threat to the organization since it was founded after the 2008 financial crisis.
Warren was one of the key creators of the CFPB, which was created to enforce consumer protection laws and crack down on predatory lending through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
On Thursday, she was joined by Cassandra Gould, a reverend and senior strategist at Faith in Action, who also celebrated the decision.
“When you have an agency that does such a good job of protecting consumers, a lot of banks, a lot of lenders and a lot of Republicans are going to come after it and try to shut it down,” Warren said.
Two lender trade associations, backed by business groups and each of the nation's Republican attorneys general, sought to attack the Federal Reserve's funding of the agency, saying it violated Congress' authority.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas rejected the argument, ultimately siding with the Biden administration.
Warren said President Biden helped make the CFPB stronger because he believes in what it does.
Although she said Thursday is about celebration, the Massachusetts senator warned there could be more challenges ahead.
“We are not fooling ourselves. They come back again, they have another attack, they figure out another way to go after the agency. They will do it again and again and again,” she said.
Warren argued that Republicans would attack the CFPB because the agency costs banks and lenders “a lot of money.”
“So yeah, we know they're out there. They have enough money, they will continue to fight, but so do we,” she said.
