CFPB Brings Back Probationary Employees After Judge’s Ruling

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reinstated all probationary and most term employees it had terminated, after a federal judge mandated they be returned to work.

Terminated CFPB employees will receive back pay from the time they were fired, and their terminations will be removed from employment records, according to a letter from CFPB Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez to affected staff obtained by Bloomberg Law.

Most of the employees will remain on administrative leave until instructed to return to work by their managers, Martinez said.

Term employees who worked for the CFPB for two years or more weren’t reinstated, according to multiple sources who spoke on condition of anonymity over concerns about retaliation. The CFPB didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The letter included the employees’ names, positions and salaries. The first wave of CFPB probationary employees were terminated using a form cover letter due to a bad mail merge, although when they clicked on an attachment all details were correct.

The agency had terminated 70 enforcement attorneys and other probationary employees as well as up to 100 term employees, such as technologists studying the impact of Big Tech on consumer finance, in the week after acting Director Russell Vought took over on Feb. 7.

Judge James Bredar of the US District Court for the District of Maryland ruled March 13 that the firing of probationary employees at 18 agencies, including the CFPB, were were unlawful workforce reductions.

Bredar’s ruling is just one of several setbacks President Donald Trump, Vought, and presidential adviser Elon Musk have faced in attempting to slash the federal workforce. But the slashing is expected to continue in the coming weeks.

Federal agencies were required to submit plans for a major reduction-in-force to the Office of Personnel Management last week. Several agencies, including the Department of Education, have announced their workforce cuts, and others are expected to do so in the coming days.

Back and Forth

Vought and his team, including representatives from the Department of Government Efficiency, had planned to terminate up to 95% of the CFPB’s workforce by Feb. 14.

But the National Treasury Employees Union, which opposed the plan, struck an agreement with the CFPB to put the firings on hold while Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia determines whether to grant a preliminary injunction to stop further reductions.

Since then, the CFPB has moved to reinstate workers in legally mandated functions, such as consumer response, back to work.

The effort hasn’t been entirely smooth, with many workers unsure if they can go back to work and key vendor contracts not entirely operational.

The Trump administration intends to shut down the CFPB even while it brings workers back, a whistleblower said at a March 11 hearing. Jackson said she’s “leaning” toward granting a preliminary injunction to ensure that a CFPB remains while she determines if the Trump administration moved illegally to eliminate the agency.