Consider our work to protect the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from the Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to unilaterally dismantle it. For 15 years, the CFPB has successfully protected consumers from unfair and predatory practices in the financial-services industry, returning over $21 billion in restitution to scammed consumers. Yet in the first year of the Trump Administration, we witnessed an all-out attack on the CFPB and its invaluable work protecting consumers. At different stages of one lawsuit challenging this effort, CAC filed multiple briefs in the D.C. Circuit, explaining why the Administration’s actions were unlawful and why courts can review the plaintiffs’ constitutional separation-of-powers claim.
And late last year, right before the holidays, CAC filed another amicus brief defending the CFPB, this time from the Trump Administration’s attempts to defund the agency by misreading the law that created it. Our brief was filed in the Northern District of California on behalf of current and former Members of Congress, including the authors of the law that created the CFPB. The brief explained that Congress set up a stable source of funding for the CFPB so it could do its important work on behalf of the American people without interruption. The Trump Administration’s new reading of the law creating the CFPB completely contravenes Congress’s statutory plan. (We were gratified to see a D.C. court reach this conclusion in a decision in a separate case. In that case, the plaintiffs cited our amicus brief in the reply brief they filed in support of their motion urging the court to hold that the Trump administration’s attempts to defund the agency were unlawful.)
The fight to protect the CFPB is definitely going to continue in 2026. In a bit of good news late last year, the full D.C. Circuit agreed to hear the challenge to the Trump administration’s attempt to unilaterally dismantle the agency, and briefs in that case will be due next month. Have no doubt, we plan to stay in the fight.
Attacks on expert agencies affect so many aspects of our lives, including tenants’ rights. When the Department of Housing and Urban Development makes millions of dollars in mortgage insurance available to provide stability in the housing market, it also requires mortgagees to agree to common-sense requirements, like setting aside money for emergencies. The Millennia Housing Group and its sister corporations set aside money—right into its CEO’s pockets. Millennia’s misuse of tenants’ rents was all the more galling, given its long record of failing to fix crumbling, dangerous, and unheated housing.
When HUD found that Millennia violated its contract with the government and issued a fee, Millennia challenged HUD’s whole system of holding developers accountable through administrative proceedings. Our amicus brief in the Sixth Circuit explained why this system is lawful. Among other things, the FHA insurance scheme distributes valuable government benefits to private industry to encourage home construction, and the federal government has authority to determine who receives the benefit of participating in this program. This is exactly the sort of scenario in which the government may seek penalties in administrative proceedings. While cases about administrative proceedings might seem wonky, we at CAC know that they have concrete stakes for Millennia’s tenants and countless others who are the victims of unlawful actions.
In Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corp. and New Jersey Transit Corp. v. Colt, the New Jersey Transit Corporation is another corporation trying to avoid accountability to the people it’s meant to serve. When two buses operated by the New Jersey Transit Corporation (NJTC) struck and injured people in New York and Pennsylvania, NJTC claimed that it was entitled to state sovereign immunity and thus could not be sued in court. The amicus brief we filed in the Supreme Court traced the history of state-affiliated corporations and explained that they have never been entitled to immunity. NJTC can be held accountable in court for injuries that it causes, just like any other corporation. As CAC Legal Fellow Harith Khawaja explained after oral argument, “For decades following the ratification of the Constitution, the Supreme Court applied this clear rule to adjudicate cases against state-created corporate banks. As multiple Justices, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, recognized during today’s argument, this history means that there should be no presumption that the New Jersey Transit Corporation is entitled to sovereign immunity.”
Big businesses know that their legal schemes to avoid accountability too rarely make front-page news. That’s why the Constitutional Accountability Center is here to live up to our name and will never stop working to ensure that corporations can be held accountable to the law. From the district courts to the Supreme Court, we’re on the case.
