Live blog of orders and opinions - Monday, June 29, 2020
We live-blogged on Monday, June 29, as the court released orders form the June 25 conference and opinions in Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, June Medical Services v. Russo and United States Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International. SCOTUSblog is sponsored by Casetext: making litigation more efficient with A.I. and machine learning technology.
3rd & 7 37yd
3rd & 7 37yd
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The Chief then writes that the removal protection CAN be severed from the other statutory provisions bearing on the CFPB's authority. "The agency may therefore continue to operate, but its Director, in light of our decision, must be removable by the President at will."
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An initial quick read suggests that the decision is laying the groundwork for eliminating for-cause protection for most other independent agencies. The majority opinion describes Humphrey's Executor -- the case that initially allowed independent agencies -- this way: "In short, Humphrey’s Executor permitted Congress to give for-cause removal protections to a multimember body of experts, balanced along partisan lines, that performed legislative and judicial functions and was said not to exercise any executive power." The majority then refuses to "extend" Humphrey's Executor to this case.
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Much more lighthearted question about the way the Court's website works. For justices with a unique last initial, it simply uses that - R for Roberts, B for Breyer. For those that share a last name, it uses both initials - BK for Kavanaugh and EK for Kagen. So why then is Sotomayor 'SS'? My only guess is that this is maybe a holdover from Scalia's time?
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Wow. That turned out to be a busy 30 minutes. I am covering all three of these cases, so I am going to drop off now, but hopefully Kevin and Steve can stick around to answer some more of your questions. The good news is that we will be back again in less than 24 hours! We'll try to start a little bit earlier so that we can answer more questions -- maybe 9:20 or so. Thanks again for joining us, stay well, and hope to see you tomorrow.
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Justice Kagan has this in her Seila Law opinion:The majority offers the civics class version of separation of powers—call it the Schoolhouse Rock definition of the phrase. See Schoolhouse Rock! Three Ring Government (Mar. 13, 1979), https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed pKSGyiT-o3o (“Ring one, Executive. Two is Legislative, that’s Congress. Ring three, Judiciary”).
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@Justin
I think the only thing that changes with the CFPB is that the President can fire the director at will. Since Trump already has a CFPB director that he appointed, this probably won't affect anything unless Trump loses the election and Biden wants to bring in someone else, right? -
So just to be clear, the immediate effect of Seila Law is that the head of the CFPB can be removed by the President without cause, but really, there is no practical effect because the present CFPB head is a Trump appointee because the CFPB head challenged had voluntarily left of his own accord.
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Thanks for joining. Analysis of all three of today's decisions is coming from Amy - send her your strength - as well as from a slate of contributors on the decision in June Medical Services. 10 still to go, with opinions for sure tomorrow. We'll be back here tomorrow morning. Until then, enjoy the rest of your Monday!