Dec. 30 (UPI) — A federal judge on Tuesday issued an order saying that the Federal Reserve must continue to fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Early in December, the court upheld a lower court’s injunction against closing the bureau while a lawsuit is pending. The suit was brought by the National Treasury Employees Union against Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought. He is also the acting CFPB director.
The Trump administration and Vought have sought to shutter the agency and lay off 1,500 employees. When it couldn’t shut the agency down, the administration stopped funding the department.
Congress created the CFPB in 2008 to protect consumers against illegal business practices. It became a target when billionaire Elon Musk was running the Department of Government Efficiency.
“CFPB RIP,” Musk said in a Feb. 7 post on X.
“The CFPB has been a woke and weaponized agency against disfavored industries and individuals for a long time,” Vought said on Feb. 8. “This must end.”
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson clarified that the CFPB must continue to request funding and the Federal Reserve must provide the funding from its “combined earnings” so the agency can fulfill its statutory duties.
The administration had argued that there were no funds legally available from the Fed.
But Jackson wrote that they had “manufactured” a lack of funding to justify not following her earlier order to keep the agency open.
“Neither the statute, the injunction, nor the Fed’s willingness to pay has changed; the only new circumstance is the administration’s determination to eliminate an agency created by Congress with the stroke of pen, even while the matter is before the Court of Appeals,” she wrote in her decision.
In March, Jackson granted plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction to stop the CFPB’s dissolution due to potential harm to its employees and others. A federal appeals court overturned her order, but in December the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed to hear the case and vacated the other appeals court ruling.