Well well. Democrats finally appreciate Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the unitary executive. We refer to Joe Biden’s first-day resignation of the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Kathy Kraninger, and the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Peter Robb.
A president earns his own people to run administrative agencies. But Mr Biden’s resignation marks a break with a long precedent at NLRB and a 180 degree reversal of democratic views on the CFPB. The good news is that this could lead to a legal challenge to drab precedents from the Supreme Court.
In 2010, the Democratic Congress created the CFPB as an independent agency whose director could only be fired by the president for inefficiency, dereliction of duty, or felony. While on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, then Judge Kavanaugh wrote both a decision and dissent claiming that this restriction violated the separation of powers. His logic was taken over by the Supreme Court last summer (Seila Law v CFPB).
Cue the liberal outrage. The Republican officials of the Court have made it clear Seila their dislike for independent agencies, ”Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse bellowed.
To be clear, Ms. Kraninger supported the president’s general removal authority, even though it meant that a future president could remove her. So it happened. Ms. Kraninger received an email from the White House at 12:21 PM on Wednesday saying, “If you don’t resign at 2:00 PM today, President Biden will remove you from that office.”