Court Blocks CFPB Firings, Tests Presidential Power

Vought, who also serves as the administration's Office of Management and Budget director and helped draft Project 2025, has said the CFPB must cut staff because Congress slashed its budget in half last year. Under his watch, the bureau has stopped supervising nonbanks, sharply reduced bank enforcement, and ordered staff to stop work. Vought and CFPB Chief Legal Officer Mark Paoletta told the district court the agency can function with roughly 200 employees, down from 1,755 a year ago. The administration has fired more than 315,000 federal workers in the past year.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who created the CFPB, praised the ruling. "The D.C. Circuit rejected the Trump Administration's latest request to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau," she said in a statement, adding that 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."

The case returns to Judge Jackson, who earlier held evidentiary hearings and found that CFPB leadership had tried to close the agency. Vought has claimed no final agency action or paper trail shows a decision to eliminate the bureau. The CFPB has refused to cooperate with a Government Accountability Office review of its 2024 actions.

In her March 2025 ruling that first blocked the firings, Jackson wrote: "There is no act of Congress that empowers the president to shut down the CFPB in his discretion."