Trump Officials to Appeal Judge’s Order Halting CFPB Shutdown

The Trump administration will appeal a federal judge’s ruling temporarily blocking it from dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday issued a preliminary injunction requiring the CFPB to rehire terminated employees and stop deleting agency data while she considers whether the administration illegally moved to shutter the agency.

Jackson, an Obama appointee, also ordered the CFPB to restart any contracts necessary to perform legally mandated work, such as its consumer complaint database and consumer response activities.

Trump officials in a Saturday motion said they will ask the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to weigh in on the order.

The administration has had a mixed record before federal appeals courts in other cases challenging moves by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to slash federal agencies.

Jackson in her ruling said the CFPB under acting Director Russell Vought was moving forward with plans to shutter the agency even as it assured the court it was allowing mandatory work to continue.

“Absent an injunction freezing the status quo—preserving the agency’s data, its operational capacity, and its workforce—there is a substantial risk that the defendants will complete the destruction of the agency completely in violation of law well before the Court can rule on the merits, and it will be impossible to rebuild,” Jackson wrote.

The Trump administration argued that allowing it to proceed with plans to gut the CFPB was necessary because it was in “the public’s interest in the democratically-elected President’s prerogative to pursue his policy objectives,” according to Jackson’s ruling.

But the CFPB was created by Congress and only Congress can move to eliminate it through legislation, she said.

“If the President finds the Consumer Financial Protection Act to be unsatisfactory, the administration will remain completely free to advance his agenda by proposing legislation that reconfigures the agency in a manner that is consistent with his policy preferences,” Jackson said.

The Consumer Financial Protection Act is part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that created the CFPB.

Gupta Wessler LLP and Public Citizen Litigation Group represent the CFPB’s union and its co-plaintiffs.

The case is NTEU v. Vought, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00381, Notice of Appeal 3/29/25.