A federal appeals court Friday rolled back parts of a judge’s injunction preventing mass firings at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the CFPB’s request to overturn Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s injunction, but it stayed certain provisions – namely, allowing agency leaders to terminate employees who have been “determined, after an individualized assessment, to be unnecessary to the performance of [the] defendants’ statutory duties.”
Under Friday’s ruling, the CFPB may also send out a reduction-in-force notice to employees deemed unnecessary.
“Every CFPB worker does work that is necessary to protect consumers,” Cat Farman, the president of the CFPB’s union, said Friday in a press release. “Our concern remains that [CFPB Acting Director Russ] Vought will take any permission to conduct RIFs as permission to fire us illegally all over again.”
Berman Jackson, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, granted a preliminary injunction March 28, halting the CFPB from issuing RIFs and requiring the agency to reinstate all probationary and term employees it had fired since Feb. 10.
Justice Department attorneys, representing the CFPB, subsequently asserted that Berman Jackson’s injunction “appears to reflect a deeply problematic premise: that the CFPB as it existed on January 19, 2025, should be the benchmark for minimum statutory compliance, and that any departure from that model carries a taint of illegality.”
Berman Jackson denied the CFPB’s motion to appeal, but the bureau took its case to the appeals panel.
The CFPB’s union emphasized that much of Berman Jackson’s order stands – specifically, provisions preserving the agency’s data, reinstating previously canceled contracts and striking down Vought’s earlier stop-work order.
Oral arguments before the appeals panel are set for May 16.
