About 1,500 employees were set to be jettisoned at the bureau.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered an immediate halt to the planned firings of nearly 1,500 employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and is ordering the Trump administration to hand over communications and make top officials available for testimony to determine whether they deliberately violated one of her court orders.
District Judge Amy Berman Jackson told attorneys for the government she was “deeply concerned” about the apparently rushed efforts to implement a Reduction In Force, or RIF, of approximately 1483 employees at the CFPB which was set to take effect at 6 pm tonight.
Jackson said the moves by CFPB leadership, including Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and general counsel of the OMB Mark Paoletta, in apparent coordination with a staffer from Elon Musk’s DOGE operation, Gavin Kliger, may be in direct violation of a preliminary injunction she had put in place — which the D.C. Circuit upheld in part. That injunction required terminations at the agency to be carried out only after “particularized assessments” of individual employees’ performance.
She told attorneys from the Justice Department the reductions in force were “not going to happen in the meantime” and ordered them to advise the agency leadership to make that clear to employees who had been informed they would be ousted. Many of those employees sat in her courtroom Friday, and several broke into tears following the hearing.
Jackson further ordered a hearing for April 28 where she said Paoletta should be prepared to testify under oath, and Kliger should also plan to be in attendance to potentially provide testimony. She also said the government should retain and be prepared to provide any communications between Paoletta, Vought and Kliger in advance of the hearing to help her determine whether her preliminary injunction was deliberately violated.
Supporters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rally after Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Russell Vought told all of the agency’s staff to stay away from the office and do no work, outside the CFPB in Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 2025.
Craig Hudson/Reuters, FILE
The Trump administration had begun the process this week of firing 1,474 employees at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, according to a sworn declaration from Paoletta, the agency’s chief legal officer.
The administration plans to run the agency with a 206-person staff, according to court filings Friday morning, a steep decrease from the 1,680 employees who previously worked for the consumer-protection agency. Some departments within the CFPB were cut entirely or reduced to a single employee, according to Paoletta.
“An approximately 200-person agency allows the Bureau to fulfill its statutory duties and better aligns with the new leadership’s priorities and management philosophy,” Paoletta wrote.
According to Paoletta, agency leadership conducted a “particularized assessment” of each department to determine how to run the CFPB with the “smaller, more efficient operation.”
“Leadership has discovered many instances in which the Bureau’s activities have pushed well beyond the limits of the law,” he wrote.
A security officer works inside of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau building headquarters Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, in Washington.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP, FILE
The CFPB, created by Congress to safeguard Americans against unfair business practices in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, has been targeted for elimination by President Donald Trump as part of his efforts to slash the federal government.
Trump has said the CFPB is “very important to get rid of” and that the organization was “set up to destroy some very good people.”
Its oversight applies to everything from mortgages to credit cards to bank fees to student loans to data collection. By law, the CFPB has the rare ability to issue new rules and to impose fines against companies who break them.
Since its establishment in 2011 through last June, the CFPB said it has clawed back $20.7 billion for American consumers.
