This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America, a lawsuit filed by predatory payday lenders seeking to strike down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s independent funding mechanism—and by extension, the Bureau itself. Coincidentally, in the way these things work, there are glaring conflicts of interest with two sitting members of the Court: Sam Alito, and Clarence Thomas. Via the American Prospect:
The case, in which the agency is appealing a far-right Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last October, could have catastrophic impacts if the Roberts Court sides with the payday lender plaintiffs. As the Prospect’s David Dayen has noted, the Fifth Circuit’s ruling “threatens the functioning of daily life,” as its radical interpretation of the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause would gut not only the CFPB (triggering a 2008-like mortgage market meltdown), but also many other regulatory agencies and federal programs without traditional appropriations—including Medicare, Social Security, and the Federal Reserve.
An obvious backdrop to this high-stakes case is the mounting ethics scandals of the Court’s conservative justices. Take Justice Samuel Alito, for example. Hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer—who took Alito on a luxury Alaska fishing trip—holds at least $90 million in financial companies overseen by the CFPB. Alito has thus far failed to recuse himself from the case.
The ethics conflicts are even worse for Justice Clarence Thomas, who has also failed to recuse. According to ProPublica, Thomas has secretly attended at least two donor events for conservative billionaire Charles Koch’s political advocacy organization and is seen as a “fundraising draw” for the Koch network. Americans for Prosperity Foundation, one of the Koch empire’s many advocacy arms, has filed an amicus brief in CFPB v. CFSA calling the Bureau a “threat [to] liberty” and “mockery of the separation of powers.” Another anti-CFPB amicus filer in the case is none other than John Eastman, a former Thomas law clerk who is currently facing disbarment proceedings and a criminal indictment for trying to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election results. Eastman has previously tried to leverage his connections with Thomas to his benefit, corresponding with Thomas’s wife Ginni (a notably unhinged electoral-fraud conspiracy theorist) in the run-up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Even Thomas’s most well-known benefactor, Dallas-based developer Harlan Crow, has much to gain from a favorable outcome in the CFPB v. CFSA case. Crow and his real estate empire are among the most prominent backers of the National Multifamily Housing Council, a landlord lobbying group that has mobilized industry opposition to the Bureau’s scrutiny of the tenant screening industry.
I should mention that Thomas actually recused himself in another case this week, I guess because good old Ginni was also trying to overturn the election? What a family! Looks like the public outrage is having an effect. Keep it up!
Justice Clarence Thomas, in a break from his practices in earlier cases involving the 2020 election, recused himself on Monday when the Supreme Court turned down an appeal from an architect of a plan to subvert the 2020 election.
