CFPB workers are receiving mass layoff notices

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is sending out mass layoff notices that appear to be in defiance of a court order blocking further layoffs following DOGE-induced cuts. “I regret to inform you that you are affected by a reduction in force (RIF) action,” says a notice reviewed by The Verge that was sent by CFPB Acting Director Russell Vought to an agency employee. “This RIF action is necessary to restructure the Bureau’s operation to better reflect the agency’s priorities and mission.” Access to CFPB systems will be cut off after Friday, and employees will be placed on administrative leave until their official end date, the notice says. Fox Business reports that around 1,500 workers will receive RIF notices across core functions, based on an unnamed source. On Thursday night, CFPB Chief Legal Officer Mark Paoletta sent a notice of the agency’s supervision and enforcement priorities that said the CFPB would “shift resources away from enforcement and supervision that can be done by the States” and rescinded previous enforcement and supervision priority documents, The Wall Street Journal reported. In March, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration not to “terminate any CFPB employee, 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 employee.” An appeals court order this month partially stayed that portion of the injunction, but only to the extent it would keep the CFPB from issuing a RIF that the agency determined “after a particularized assessment, to be unnecessary to the performance of defendants’ statutory duties.” The union that brought the original complaint to stop the agency from being gutted filed a motion late Thursday asking the court to require the government to explain how the mass terminations don’t violate its preliminary injunction. “The plaintiffs have been told that entire offices, including statutorily mandated ones, have or soon will be either eliminated or reduced to a single person,” the filing says. “It is unfathomable that cutting the Bureau’s staff by 90 percent in just 24 hours, with no notice to people to prepare for that elimination, would not ‘interfere with the performance’ of its statutory duties, to say nothing of the implausibility of the defendants having made a ‘particularized assessment’ of each employee’s role in the three-and-a-half business days since the court of appeals imposed that requirement.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee who helped establish the agency, called the agency’s “dismantling” of the agency “yet another assault on consumers and our democracy by this lawless Administration, and we will fight back with everything we’ve got.” Updated March 17th: Added filing from CFPB worker union and statement from Sen. Elizabeth Warren.