Supreme Court case features twist on appropriations power

“This marks the first time in our nation’s history that any court has held that Congress violated the Appropriations Clause by enacting a law authorizing spending,” the government’s brief said.

The Biden administration pointed out many agencies critical to the economy, including the U.S. Postal Service, U.S. Mint, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and even U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services receive their funding outside the appropriations process.

And the government pointed to a previous challenge to the CFPB structure, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2018 wrote that Congress “can, consistent with the Appropriations Clause, create governmental institutions reliant on fees, assessments, or investments rather than the ordinary appropriations process.”

The government told the Supreme Court justices in this latest case that the Appropriations Clause is satisfied when Congress has enacted a law that expressly authorizes the executive branch expenditures, as it did with the CFPB.

“And courts have no license to depart from the text and history of the constitutional provisions adopted by the Founders in pursuit of their own views about the proper structure and funding of administrative agencies,” the government brief states.