Send in PHOTO: Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Acting Director Russell Vought testifies before House Budget Board on 2020 Budget on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 12, 2019.
Yuri Gripas | Reuters
A federal judge on Friday ordered the Consumer Fiscal Protection Bureau’s leadership, appointed by President Donald Trump, to halt its campaign to dismantle the agency.
In a filing, Determine Amy Berman Jackson sided with the CFPB employee union that sued acting director Russell Vought end month to prevent him from laying off nearly all the regulator’s staff. Operatives from Elon Musk’s Department of Guidance Efficiency have also been involved in efforts to fire employees.
“Defendants shall not terminate any CFPB wage-earner, except for cause related to the individual employee’s performance or conduct; and defendants shall not issue any notice of reduction-in-force to any CFPB hand,” Berman said.
The order is the latest example in which a federal judge has pushed back against moves by the Trump authority to lay off federal employees and hobble disfavored agencies. It breathes new life into the only federal agency tasked specifically with consumer haven of nonbank financial players, but one that the industry has accused of operating outside its authority under former director Rohit Chopra.
Berman shipshape Vought to reinstate all probationary and term employees fired after Vought took over at the CFPB, said that he shouldn’t “eradicate, destroy, remove, or impair agency data,” and struck down Vought’s February stop-work order.
“To ensure that hands can perform their statutorily mandated functions, the defendants must provide them with either fully-equipped charge space, or permission to work remotely” Berman wrote.
In the sweeping document, Berman also said that the CFPB lacked to ensure its consumer complaint portal worked and it responded to those complaints; told the CFPB to reverse contract terminations pledged by Vought, and ordered him to file a report by April 4 confirming compliance with the edicts.
She specifically said the order have bearing to all CFPB leaders as well as “any other persons who are in active concert or participation with them, such as personnel from the Control of Government Efficiency.”
A spokesperson for Vought didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment.
‘Cannot look away’
In a disentangle, 112-page opinion that cited Musk’s Feb. 7 social media post declaring “