dhollier@imfpubs.com

The Supreme Court may decide as soon as Friday whether to hear appeals in Collins v. Mnuchin, a shareholder case challenging the legality of the net worth sweep forced upon Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac early last decade.

Briefs for both sides were delivered to the justices for review on Dec. 10. The nine justices will discuss the merits of the case at their weekly conference on Friday.

Collins is notable because both the plaintiffs and defendants petitioned SCOTUS for a writ of certiorari (asking to grant an appeal). That’s because the September decision issued by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was split.

The appeals court ruled in part for the plaintiffs, saying that the single-director structure of the Federal Housing Finance Agency violated the separation-of-powers principle and thus was unconstitutional.

However, the court also sided with the defendants by determining that the remedy was simply to sever that portion of the law and leave the rest of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which created FHFA, intact.