Justices Thomas and Alito — typically in agreement — split in major CFPB ruling

The Supreme Court’s decision this week upholding the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau surprised some court watchers since it pinned Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. against each other — with Justice Thomas authoring the majority opinion and Justice Alito authoring the dissent.

Both are viewed as the high court’s most conservative justices who are originalists, and in the past, they’ve typically been on the same side in most cases.

In the 2021 term, for example, the two were in agreement 73% of the time, according to SCOTUSBlog, which appears to have stopped tracking justices’ agreement data in recent years.