The order comes amid the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back the federal workforce.
President Donald Trump’s executive order enabling the speedy removal of thousands of career federal managers is now on hold as it relates to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), as a lawsuit challenging the policy moves forward.
A Feb. 14 order signed by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson bars the Trump administration from deleting or removing CFPB data from the bureau’s systems and from firing any CFPB employee without cause or issuing them a notice of reduction in the workforce.
The order further stipulates that the administration may not transfer any CFPB funds to other entities “other than to satisfy the ordinary operating obligations of the CFPB.”
The president’s directive, signed on his first day in office, resurrects and revises a policy implemented near the end of his first term. It strips thousands of “policy-influencing”—or managerial—workers of the civil service protections that have traditionally made it difficult to terminate their employment.
The National Treasury Employees’ Union promptly sued Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought over the new policy and asked the judge to halt its enforcement, citing fears of additional firings and layoffs at the CFPB.
“Earlier this week, more than 70 employees were fired in indiscriminatory fashion after close of business, and Defendant Vought has indicated that he plans to return CFPB’s operational funding,” Deepak Gupta, the union’s attorney, said in a Feb. 13 filing.
He echoed that concern in court, stating that he had received information that additional firings and layoffs were planned for that day.
“I don’t want to leave the courthouse without some assurance that these reductions in force won’t occur today,” Gupta said.
Vought was designated acting director of the CFPB while Trump’s nominee to lead the bureau, Jonathan McKernan, seeks Senate confirmation. Originally proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the agency was established in 2011 to protect consumers from abusive financial practices.
The CFPB’s former Chief Technologist Erie Meyer noted in a Feb. 13 court filing that within the past week, Vought directed bureau staff to stop all work and canceled all contracts for the companies that run the agency’s consumer response operations.
