National Urban League Hails Supreme Court’s Rejection of Payday Lenders’ Assault on Communities of Color

National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial issued the following statement in response to today’s Supreme Court ruling protecting the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau:

“The Supreme Court today struck a blow against predatory lenders and their exploitation of vulnerable low-income communities of color.

“The majority’s simple, clear determination that the CFPB’s funding is constitutional exposes the ludicrousness of the lenders’ argument. As we noted in the amicus brief we filed along with other civil rights and economic justice organizations, the Framers could not have intended for the annual appropriations process to be the only legal means of authorized spending, when that process was not created until after the Civil War.

“It’s obvious that it was not the CFPB’s funding mechanism that the predatory lenders find objectionable. It’s the fact that the CFPB stands in the way of their underhanded schemes to trap the nation’s most financially vulnerable citizens into long and irreversible cycles of debt.

“We are relieved the justices saw through the lenders’ specious claims and upheld the nation’s most meaningful effort in generations to protect its citizens from financial wrongdoing.”