The consumer agency, conceived and set up by Elizabeth Warren, now a Democratic senator and 2020 presidential contender, immediately became a lightning rod for attacks by Republicans, who considered it anti-business.

Angered by what they saw as excessive power and a lack of accountability at the CFPB, Republicans repeatedly pushed to rein in the agency by attempting to install a bipartisan commission at the top and subject it to more congressional oversight through the appropriations process.

Those attacks have abated since President Donald Trump put his own people in charge of the bureau, but the leadership issue was never resolved.

CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger decided last month that the agency would no longer defend its leadership structure as constitutional, and the Trump administration filed a brief with the court reflecting that position.

Kraninger took over the agency in December, following a tumultuous year in which former acting director Mick Mulvaney reduced the agency’s staff and budget.

A unanimous 9th Circuit panel rejected Seila Law’s constitutionality argument earlier this year and ordered the company to comply with the agency’s investigation of the way the firm marketed debt-relief services. The two other cases challenging the CFPB’s structure are making their way through circuit courts.

As a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote an opinion in October 2016 declaring the agency’s leadership structure unconstitutional.

“Because the Director alone heads the agency without Presidential supervision, and in light of the CFPB's broad authority over the U.S. economy, the Director enjoys significantly more unilateral power than any single member of any other independent agency,” Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion for a three-judge panel.

Kavanaugh advocated severing the for-cause removal provision from the law rather than striking down Dodd-Frank in its entirety. The agency’s constitutionality was later upheld in an banc rehearing of the case, meaning it was decided by all the circuit court's judges.

Consumer Bankers Association President and CEO Richard Hunt cheered the news that the high court would consider the Seila Law case.

“The Supreme Court will finally put the constitutionality of the CFPB’s leadership structure to rest, but regardless of the outcome, a sole director calling all the shots will never provide the long-term stability consumers deserve and the well-regulated financial sector needs,” Hunt said. “For that, Congress must create a bipartisan, Senate-confirmed commission to lead the Bureau.”

