A trade group has filed an amicus brief in support of an online lender that is being sued by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection for collecting on loans that were allegedly illegal.
The lawsuit was filed last November, just a few days before former bureau director Richard Cordray resigned to run for governor of Ohio. The company was alleged to have originated loans to individuals in states where it did not have a license to do so. The Native American Financial Services Association filed the amicus brief in support of Think Finance’s defense that the leadership structure of the BCFP is unconstitutional and that the agency has no business regulating Native American tribes and tribal leaders.
“Not content with the enormous clout it already claims over individual citizens and corporate entities, the CFPB has unilaterally sought to exert its will over sovereign tribes and States,” the association writes in its brief. “Allowing the CFPB — an independent, unchecked, and virtually unaccountable bureaucratic agency—to regulate tribes and States in this manner would significantly alter the balance of power in our federalist system of government. It is certain Congress did not implement so fundamental a change through such oblique statutory language.”
The brief was filed in support of a motion to dismiss that was made by Think Finance. A copy of the brief can be accessed by clicking here.
The leadership structure of the agency has been questioned for nearly two years, following a ruling in PHH Mortgage v. CFPB in which an appeals court originally ruled that the single director who could only be fired for cause was unconstitutional before the full appeals court overturned that decision
