Appeals court sides with CFPB’s union, blocks job cuts

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• Key insight: The legal power struggle between the Trump administration and the National Treasury Employees Union has evolved into a major separation-of-powers showdown.
• What’s at stake: At issue is whether the president has the authority to dismantle an agency created by Congress.
• Expert quote: “Courts will have a full chance to review Vought’s most recent unlawful plan to sideline the CFPB by firing most of its remaining staff.” — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee.

A federal appellate court blocked the Trump administration from immediately firing employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in a closely-watched legal battle over presidential power. 

Late Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the CFPB’s union by upholding a preliminary injunction issued in March 2025. The full court further extended the legal battle between Russell Vought, the CFPB’s acting director, and the National Treasury Employees Union. 

The full appellate court upheld an injunction that has blocked Vought from firing up to 1,400 CFPB employees. The order was a response to a revised plan by Vought to slash two-thirds of the agency’s workforce. 

The appeals court sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who will decide whether to modify the injunction and allow the CFPB to issue reductions in force, or RIF notices, to employees represented by the NTEU. The court rejected a request from the Department of Justice, representing Vought, to continue RIFs. The court also did not impose a deadline on the district court that was requested by the DOJ. 

In a statement issued Saturday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, praised the appellate court order.

“Last night the D.C. Circuit rejected the Trump Administration’s latest request to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, refusing to lift the injunction that has prevented Russ Vought from carrying out his plan to eliminate the agency,” said Warren, who created the agency. “Courts will also have a full chance to review Vought’s most recent unlawful plan to sideline the CFPB by firing most of its remaining staff.”

The fight between Vought and the NTEU is being closely watched as a test by the executive branch that claims the president can shut down an agency created by Congress. In December, the D.C. Circuit granted a rare en banc review — a sign of the case’s importance — after the union appealed to the district court claiming the president is limited by both law and Supreme Court precedent from conducting mass firings to reshape the federal government.  

One aspect of the case that Judge Jackson will take into account is the agency’s budget, which Congress slashed in half last year. Vought has claimed that the CFPB must cut staff because the budget supports fewer employees. Under his watch the CFPB no longer conducts any supervision or examinations of nonbanks, and has radically cut enforcement of the largest banks. 

Vought, who is also the Trump administration’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, was a key architect of Project 2025, the Trump administration’s plan to reduce the federal workforce. In the past year, the administration has fired more than 315,000 federal workers. 

Vought and Mark Paoletta, the CFPB’s chief legal officer, made declarations to the district court that the CFPB needs a staff of only 200 people to perform its legally required functions, down from 1,755 a year ago. When Vought took over the agency last February, he immediately closed the bureau’s headquarters building and ordered staff to stop working. 

Last year, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit lifted the district court’s preliminary injunction and the union appealed. Before that, Judge Jackson held evidentiary hearings and determined that the CFPB’s leadership had tried to shut down the agency. Vought claimed there was no final agency action, or paper trail, showing any decision to eliminate the bureau. The CFPB and Vought have refused to cooperate with a review by the Government Accountability Office of the agency’s actions last year.

In her ruling, Jackson stated: “There is no act of Congress that empowers the president to  shut down the CFPB in his discretion.”