CFPB Union Opposes Trump Bid for Expedited Review of Job Cuts

A federal district judge in Washington should review the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new plan to eliminate around half of its remaining staff, but there’s no justification for a rushed timeline sought by the Trump administration, the union representing agency employees said.

The CFPB under acting Director Russell Vought waited for more than a year to present its reduction-in-force plan after Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction blocking an earlier push to cut up to 90% of the agency’s staff, the National Treasury Employees Union and its co-plaintiffs said in a Friday brief filed with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

“Their own actions thus demonstrate that this is not an emergency warranting this Court’s extraordinary relief,” the union said.

The CFPB in its filing last month had asked the DC Circuit to issue a 45-day remand so Jackson can reconsider her order halting the previous mass-layoff plan based on the updated proposal and other steps the agency says it’s taking to meet its statutory duties.

The union agreed that allowing Jackson to review the RIF plan before the appellate judges do so was the proper path, but it said the Trump administration failed to provide any justification for an expedited timeline. The NTEU didn’t weigh in on the merits of the Trump administration’s plan.

The full DC Circuit held oral arguments in February weighing the Trump administration’s bid to tear apart the CFPB. The Trump administration has claimed in court that it never intended to shut down the CFPB despite public comments from Vought and statements from the White House, while the union has argued for court intervention to preserve an agency created by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis.

The full appellate court had granted a request from the CFPB’s employees to review a split panel ruling from last August that lifted Jackson’s preliminary injunction and allowed Vought to move forward with plans to dismantle the agency.

The CFPB has since moved forward with a significant rulemaking agenda, including rewriting Biden-era open banking and small business demographic data rules and longstanding anti-discrimination and mortgage regulations.

Because of that, the Trump administration has largely conceded that the CFPB will have to remain in place. The CFPB has even begun hiring lawyers to work in its litigation unit as it gears up for potential legal challenges to its new rules.

Vought in recent months has also sought funding from the Federal Reserve to keep the CFPB afloat, after Jackson and a federal judge in California rejected Trump administration arguments that it’s unable to request money when the central bank isn’t profitable. The funding requests have been significantly smaller than those made during the Biden administration, in part because President Donald Trump signed a GOP tax-and-spending measure last year capping how much the CFPB can receive.

The CFPB stands to run out of money to maintain current staffing levels as soon as October unless it’s cleared to lay off employees, the administration said in its filing last month. The agency has fewer than 1,200 employees remaining, down from about 1,700 authorized for fiscal 2025.

Gupta Wessler LLP represents the NTEU.

The case is NTEU v. Vought, D.C. Cir., No. 25-0509125-05091, response in opposition 4/17/26