US Court of Appeals blocks Trump administration’s plan to cut CFPB staff

The US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has blocked the Trump administration from gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s workforce, effectively halting a plan that would have slashed the agency’s headcount by roughly two-thirds.

The ruling, issued on June 19, keeps intact an agency that the administration has been trying to dismantle piece by piece since early 2025.

What the court actually blocked

The administration’s plan was ambitious, to put it mildly. The CFPB’s pre-inauguration staff stood at approximately 1,100 to 1,200 employees. The proposed cuts would have brought that number down to as few as 200, an almost 90% reduction.

More recent proposals had aimed for a slightly less dramatic target of around 556 positions. That’s still more than a 50% cut from pre-inauguration levels.

The court also denied the administration’s request for a 45-day deadline to reassess the case at the district court level.

Even before this ruling, the CFPB had already lost significant ground. Staffing levels had declined by approximately 25% to 30% from pre-second-term levels due to attrition and earlier rounds of layoffs.

The legal battle behind the ruling

The National Treasury Employees Union, along with other plaintiffs, brought the lawsuit challenging these staffing reductions. Their argument is straightforward: Congress created the CFPB through the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, in direct response to the 2008 financial crisis. You can’t just administratively dismantle an agency that Congress specifically legislated into existence.

The case, NTEU v. CFPB, has been building since 2025, when district courts first issued injunctions to prevent mass layoffs at the agency.

CFPB Acting Director Russell Vought has been leading the restructuring efforts.

The Supreme Court already ruled in 2020 that the CFPB’s structure was constitutional, though it changed how the director could be removed. What’s in question is whether the executive branch can effectively kill it through staffing cuts without going through Congress to formally repeal it.

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