Adam White - "Dodd Frank: Update on the Constitutional Challenge"

On November 4, 2015, the Houston Lawyers Chapter of The Federalist Society will host a lunch presentation by Adam White of Boyden Gray & Associate.  In July, the Obama Administration celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, but days later, a federal appeals court revived a challenge to one of the financial law’s most controversial creations.  A unanimous three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a small Texas bank has standing to challenge the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s constitutionality and to challenge the 2012 appointment of the bureau’s director, Richard Cordray.  Mr. White and his colleagues represent the bank in arguing that the agency violates the Constitution’s separation of powers.  The bureau is an independent agency and thus largely unaccountable to the President.  But because it draws funding directly from the Federal Reserve, rather than appropriations, it is also largely unaccountable to Congress.  Mr. White will give an update on this important constitutional challenge, which is likely destined for the Supreme Court. 

Mr. White is Counsel at Boyden Gray & Associates, working on various constitutional and regulatory matters. And he is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writing on legal and regulatory issues for The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, and other publications.  He is a contributing editor to National Affairs, City Journal, and The New Atlantis.  He is a Council Member of the ABA's Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, where he also co-chairs the Section's Judicial Review Committee and co-directs the Section's Supreme Court Series.  He is a member of The Federalist Society's Administrative Law Executive Committee.  He clerked for Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.