The 2008 financial crisis destabilized the economy and left millions of Americans economically devastated. Congress studied the causes of the recession to craft solutions; it determined that the financial services industry had pushed consumers into unsustainable forms of debt and that federal regulators had failed to prevent mounting risk to the economy, in part because those regulators were overly responsive to the industry they purported to police. Congress saw a need for an agency to help restore public confidence in markets: a regulator attentive to individuals and families. So it established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Congress gave the CFPB a single director protected against removal by the president without cause. In PHH Corporation v. Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau, the director’s protection against removal by the executive was challenged as an unconstitutional impediment to the president’s power.

Did Congress’s creation of an agency head who cannot be removed by the president for five years except for cause violate the constitutional principles of checks and balances?