Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[YanksGhost]

Severability... if a law has constitutional defects, is it better for the court to repair the defect (such as removing the Director's for cause only protection) or should the entire law be vacated (such as ruling that HERA must be struck down.

It is the same question that has led to many, many dismissals of suits brought over C-ship where courts ruled it was okay to simply correct the law and not shut it down entirely. What is hoped in Collins is that the court may decide it is NOT their job to legislate (write or rewrite a law) and may lead to killing HERA and sending the problem back to Congress to pass a fully constitutional replacement piece of legislation.

The reason this matters is that the prevailing statute before HERA, the GSE Act, did not give the agency Director the power to do things that Lockhart did, trampling the rights of shareholders in the process.