Consumer Financial Protection Bureau employees got at least a two-week reprieve from an expected culling of the workforce after their union and the agency agreed to let a federal judge rule on the merits of the planned staff cuts and other efforts to shutter the watchdog.
The National Treasury Employees Union said in a Thursday court filing that it anticipated acting Director Russell Vought would fire up to 95% percent of its workforce as early as Friday. A subsequent filing from Erie Meyer, the agency’s former chief technologist and adviser to the director, claimed that Vought planned to delete the agency’s trove of sensitive data.
Those moves are now on hold after the union and the CFPB on Friday agreed to a briefing schedule that would allow Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia to rule on the union’s bid for a preliminary injunction seeking to block Vought’s actions.
Jackson approved the pause in a late Friday order.
A hearing on the union’s motion is set for March 3.
Soon after Jackson signed off on the agreement, all CFPB employees except those asked to return to work by “the Acting Director, Chief Legal Officer, or another designee” were placed on administrative leave, according to an email from CFPB Human Capital Operations Manager Roland Jacob obtained by Bloomberg Law.
Funding, Data Pause
The Friday agreement mirrors one the CFPB reached with the city of Baltimore one day earlier in litigation seeking to block Vought from draining the agency’s reserve accounts.
The union had been seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the firings, but the two sides agreed to convert that motion to one seeking a preliminary injunction, just as in the Baltimore case.
Under the order, the CFPB agreed not to “delete, destroy, or remove” any agency data or database. It also agreed not to terminate any employee except for cause or issue any reduction-in-force order before a ruling on a preliminary injunction.
The CFPB further agreed not to relinquish any of its existing reserve funds or transfer money to the Federal Reserve or Treasury Department while the case moves along, matching the pause in place in the Baltimore litigation.
The CFPB has around $711 million in its reserve fund, Vought said in a Feb. 8 post on Elon Musk’s X social media platform announcing he wouldn’t request the agency’s next funding draw from the Federal Reserve.
The latest agreement comes one day after the CFPB terminated 70 to 100 ‘term’ employees. Those workers, including technologists investigating Big Tech’s push into consumer finance, fellows, and participants in the director’s “Financial Analyst” program, have time-limited contracts with full civil service protections.
Also included in Thursday’s firings was Julia Barnard, the CFPB’s student loan ombudsman. That position is mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which created the agency.
“This work matters,” she said in a statement issued by the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group founded by former CFPB General Counsel Seth Frotman and other ex-employees. “It’s a lifeline for borrowers and a safeguard against a system that too often fails them. Dismantling this function is unconscionable and will cost real people real money.”
Earlier in the week, Vought fired around 70 probationary employees, including enforcement attorneys involved in active cases.
Gupta Wessler LLP and Public Citizen Litigation Group represent the NTEU and other plaintiffs who joined the suit.
The case is NTEU v. Vought, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00381, Order 2/14/25.
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