WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the funding mechanism for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is constitutional, fending off a conservative attack on the agency. The vote in the nation’s high court was 7-2, with four conservative justices siding with the three liberals and two conservatives dissenting. The CFPB was created by Congress in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and serves as a watchdog over a variety of consumer issues ranging from mortgages to credit cards to student loans. The plaintiffs in the case — payday lending groups — had argued that the funding structure for the agency was unconstitutional. The CFPB receives its funding, currently around $600 million a year, from the U.S. Federal Reserve instead of through annual appropriations from Congress. The case ended up in the Supreme Court after conservative judges on a lower court ruled the funding mechanism violated the appropriations clause of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the power of the purse to Congress. Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion, disagreed. “Under the Appropriations Clause, an appropriation is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes,” Thomas said. “The statute that provides the bureau’s funding meets these requirements. We therefore conclude that the bureau’s funding mechanism does not violate…Read more