Appeals Court Keeps Blocking the Firing of About 1,400 CFPB Employees

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined on Friday, June 19, 2026 to let the administration proceed with reductions in force at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, leaving in place a preliminary injunction first entered in March 2025 and sending the case back to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to decide whether modified layoff notices may go ahead. The plan would have cut up to roughly 1,400 employees, about two-thirds of the bureau's workforce, as part of an effort to reduce staffing from 1,755 to about 200. Russell Vought, who serves as both White House budget director and acting CFPB director, closed the bureau's headquarters and halted operations after taking over in February 2025. The National Treasury Employees Union sued, and Judge Jackson had ruled that 'there is no act of Congress that empowers the president to shut down the CFPB in his discretion.'

The dispute tests whether an agency created by statute can be functionally dissolved through personnel actions when Congress has not repealed it.

The injunction remained in effect and the underlying legal questions were unresolved.