Vindicated by Supreme Court, CFPB director says bureau will add staff, consider new rules on banks

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Since its creation roughly 14 years ago, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has faced lawsuits, political and legal challenges to the idea of whether the Federal Government’s aggressive consumer financial watchdog agency should be allowed exist a...

NEW YORK — Since its creation roughly 14 years ago, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has faced lawsuits and political and legal challenges to the idea of whether the Federal Government's aggressive consumer financial watchdog agency should be allowed exist at all.

Those challenges came to an end this week, when the Supreme Court ended the last major legal challenge to the bureau's authority, ruling 7-2 that the CFPB could in fact draw its budget from the Federal Reserve instead of the annual Congressional appropriations process.

The opinion reversed a lower court's ruling and drew praise from consumer advocates, as well as some in the banking industry, who argued that upending 14 years of the bureau's work would cause chaos in the financial system.

Now cleared of any legal ambiguity, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra told reporters Friday that the bureau plans to hire additional investigators and has already filed legal motions on roughly a dozen cases pending against companies accused of wrongdoing that have been held up due to the Supreme Court case.

“The court's ruling makes it crystal clear that the CFPB is here to stay,” Chopra said. “The CFPB will now be able to forge ahead with our law enforcement work.”

Chopra and other senior CFPB officials said they plan to beef up the size of bureau's law enforcement office likely to a staff of 275. The bureau plans to address other matters like pawn shops, medical billing, credit reporting and financial data issues