Court will hear arguments over consumer bureau

A federal court will hear oral arguments Wednesday for a case that could have broad implications for the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at a time when the watchdog is facing intense scrutiny from Republicans and financial groups that want to de-fang the agency.

One key question that could be addressed by the panel of 11 judges in the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals is whether the structure of the agency - which has an independent director who can only be removed by the president for cause - is constitutional.

The case is playing out as some Republican lawmakers continue to call on President Donald Trump to fire the current Director Richard Cordray, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama and whose term will not end until July 2018.

Removing the independent director could make the agency more vulnerable to political shifts in Washington by giving the president more control over the direction of future rules and enforcement actions, some consumer advocates and policy analysts say. While the director of the CFPB is appointed by the president, a five-year term ensures that a director's tenure will have some overlap from one presidential term to the next.

Last October, a three-judge panel ruled that the agency should be restructured so that the director could be removed by the president at will. The court compared the consumer watchdog to other independent agencies, which are often run by a group of commissioners or a director that can be fired by the president at any time.

But the decision was vacated after the CFPB appealed and was granted the opportunity for the case to be reheard by the full panel of judges, a rare move for the court that analysts say is reserved for the most important cases.