The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s prediction about the impact of constitutional litigation on its enforcement program has proved accurate, leaving it to look for other options to pursue its agenda.

The bureau said months ago that its agenda would bog down if the U.S. Supreme Court refused to expedite review of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s holding that the CFPB’s funding structure was unconstitutional. In declining expedited review, the Supreme Court effectively ensured that the CFPB’s ability to enforce legally binding obligations would grind almost to a halt—possibly until June 2024—anytime a litigant raised the same issue.