DC District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from firing any CFPB employee except for cause, and cannot proceed with any large-scale reduction-in-force of staff. The judge is badly mistaken here.

The question centers on this: either the CFPB is part of the Executive Branch, or it is not. The answer is muddied, though not badly, by the then-Progressive-Democrat-controlled Congress’ cynical creation of the Board as funded by its own draws on the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States—draws of whatever magnitude the Board demands and that the Fed would be bound to pay up—and of its Chairman being unremovable by the President.

If the Board is not a part of the Executive Branch, then by its Design Specification, it is a fourth branch of the Federal government. It was designed to operate wholly independently of the Executive Branch and given free reign [sic] to operate similarly independently of Congress, which has wholly yielded up its purse string control of it. That would make the Board an unconstitutional creation whose existence must be ended on that ground.

However, the Supreme Court has ruled that, contra that Congress’ construction, the Board Chairman can, in fact, be removed by the President for any or no reason at all, because the Board is, in fact, an Executive Branch agency, and so under the control of the President, just the same as are all other agencies and Departments of the Executive Branch.

Since the Board is an Executive Branch agency, the President has the hiring and firing authority he needs to terminate any and all Board members and employees, subject only to already existing due process requirements. These requirements are in flux, too, as the President has considerable, although not total, authority to alter the nature of those requirements.

I look for the Supreme Court to rule in the administration’s favor (the DC Circuit is unlikely to overrule her).