Speaking on Chevron deference at Duke University School of Law in 1989, Justice Antonin Scalia told the audience to “lean back, clutch the sides of your chairs, and steel yourselves for a pretty dull lecture.” Perhaps he would have withheld his cynicism if he could have seen the Supreme Court’s administrative-law rulings in the past year.
This Essay concerns a constitutional puzzle, the puzzle of for-cause removal. For a century the Supreme Court has been attempting to answer a simple question: when is it constitutional for Congress to provide that an agency head or lower official can be removed only for cause?
Chief Justice John Roberts mystified and frustrated court watchers with his opinions in the closing weeks of the Supreme Court’s October 2019 term.
In Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Board, the Supreme Court invalidated a statutory provision that protected the director of the Consumer Finance Protection Board (CFPB) from removal by the president except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Writing for the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts announced a new test for evaluating the constitutionality of “for cause” restrictions on presidential removal of high-level agency officials.
The majority and dissenting opinions in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau disagreed about the interpretation of previous Supreme Court decisions that considered the president’s power to remove executive branch officials. But in many ways the more important disagreement was about historical practice.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 29, 2020 decision in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fixed a glaring constitutional defect in the way Congress structured the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau).
In Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, invalidated the provision of the Dodd-Frank Act restricting the president’s removal of the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to cases of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The Court’s decision leaves the director subject to removal by the president for any reason or no reason at all.
Commentators have explored many important questions in the wake of Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Do Myers v. United States and Humphrey’s Executor v. United States still stand for the proposition that Congress can impose limitations on the president’s removal authority for agency heads as long as it does not retain a role for itself?
The Constitution’s separation of powers implies the existence of three distinct and separate branches.
