UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

CONSUMER FINANCIAL No. 17-56324 PROTECTION BUREAU, Petitioner-Appellee, D.C. No. 8:17-cv-01081-JLS-JEM v.

SEILA LAW LLC, ORDER AND Respondent-Appellant. AMENDED OPINION

On Remand From the United States Supreme Court

Argued and Submitted November 19, 2020 San Francisco, California

Filed December 29, 2020 Amended May 14, 2021

Before: Susan P. Graber and Paul J. Watford, Circuit Judges, and Jack Zouhary, * District Judge.

Order; Dissent from Order by Judge Bumatay; Opinion by Judge Watford

* The Honorable Jack Zouhary, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio, sitting by designation. 2 CFPB V. SEILA LAW

SUMMARY **

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

The panel filed an order (1) amending its December 29, 2020, opinion issued on remand from the United States Supreme Court; and (2) denying on behalf of the court a sua sponte request for rehearing en banc, in a case in which the panel reaffirmed the district court’s order granting the petition of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to enforce Seila Law LLC’s compliance with the Bureau’s civil investigative demand requiring the firm to produce documents and answer interrogatories. The amendments reflected that two of the panel’s citations were to the plurality portion of the Supreme Court opinion.

The Supreme Court held that the statute establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) violated the Constitution’s separation of powers by placing leadership of the agency in the hands of a single Director who could be removed only for cause. Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, 140 S. Ct. 2183, 2197 (2020). The Court concluded, however, that the for-cause removal provision could be severed from the rest of the statute and thus did not require invalidation of the agency itself. The Supreme Court vacated the panel’s prior judgment, published at CFPB v. Seila Law LLC, 923 F.3d 680 (9th Cir. 2019), and remanded so that the panel could consider in the first instance whether the civil investigative demand (CID) was validly ratified by former Acting Director Mick Mulvaney during his year-long stint in that office. ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. CFPB V. SEILA LAW 3

In the amended opinion, the panel held that the CID was validly ratified, but that there was no need to decide whether the ratification occurred through the actions of Acting Director Mulvaney. On July 9, 2020, after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the CFPB’s current Director, Kathleen Kraninger, expressly ratified the agency’s earlier decisions “to issue the civil investigative demand to Seila Law, to deny Seila Law’s request to modify or set aside the CID, and to file a petition requesting that the district court enforce the CID.” At the time that she ratified these decisions, Director Kraninger knew that the President could remove her with or without cause. She nonetheless ratified the agency’s issuance of the CID and ongoing efforts to enforce it.

Director Kraninger’s ratification remedied any constitutional injury that Seila Law may have suffered due to the manner in which the CFPB was originally structured. Seila Law’s only cognizable injury arose from the fact that the agency issued the CID and pursued its enforcement while headed by a Director who was improperly insulated from the President’s removal authority. Any concerns that Seila Law might have had about being subjected to investigation without adequate preside