CONSTUTIONAL PROFESSOR AKA PRESIDENT OBAMA APPOINTMENT SLAPPED DOWN BY D C COURT AS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

The D.C. Circuit ruled that there was no “recess” on that particular day for purposes of the Constitution’s Recess Appointments Clause, so Cordray’s appointment was constitutionally invalid, just as the NLRB appointments made on that same day were invalid.

(Cordray’s “recess” appointment during a non-existent recess is one of the constitutional violations cited in State National Bank of Big Spring v. Geithner, another court case pending in Washington, D.C. That case also challenges provisions of the law that created the CFPB, the Dodd-Frank Act, which Obama signed into law in 2010).

Since Mr. Cordray’s appointment is invalid (he was not appointed during a recess, nor did the vacancy in his post “happen” during a recess, so it was not a valid “recess” appointment), his actions as CFPB director likewise are invalid, null and void. Just as the NLRB’s order was vacated in the Noel Canning case, so, too, should the CFPB’s actions (even assuming the agency itself were constitutional, which itself is questionable given its lack of accountability to the people’s democratically elected representatives). Lawyers who advise clients on finance and banking cases have underscored that fact: “The CFPB world has been turned upside down,” Richard Gottlieb, who heads the financial industry group at Dykema Gossett Pllc in Chicago, said in an e-mailed statement. “If the Cordray appointment is void, then so too is every supervisory action and every new regulation promulgated by the CFPB arising out of newly created bureau powers.” Source: AP