In a “tele-town hall” yesterday sponsored by Americans for Financial Reform, Senator Elizabeth Warren urged participants to contact their Senators to press them to confirm Richard Cordray as CFPB Director and support a change in Senate filibuster rules to require 51 rather than 60 votes for Mr. Cordray’s nomination to be voted on by the full Senate.

Without mentioning the decision in Noel Canning v. NLRB by name, Senator Warren asserted that Senate confirmation of Mr. Cordray would remove the recess appointment “problem” for the CFPB by making the U.S. Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling in the case irrelevant. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the petition for certiorari in Noel Canning, the D.C. Circuit decision holding that President Obama’s recess appointments to the NLRB were unconstitutional. A ruling by the Supreme Court that Noel Canning was correctly decided will likely result in a ruling by a lower court that Mr. Cordray’s recess appointment as CFPB Director was invalid for the same reasons.