The Trump administration has unveiled a narrower proposal to shrink the staff of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), court documents show, seeking to reduce the agency's workforce to 556 employees. The filing, submitted on Tuesday evening to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by the Justice Department, represents a retreat from an earlier, broader plan that would have cut nearly 90% of CFPB positions.
According to the Justice Department filing, the revised blueprint would leave the bureau with fewer than a third of the employees it had when the administration took office. The plan would also impose steep reductions within key operating units - cutting roughly 85% of posts in the Division of Supervision, which monitors the behavior of banks and nonbank financial firms that serve consumers, and eliminating about 80% of positions in enforcement.
The Justice Department asked the appeals court to permit a lower court to consider lifting a stay that currently prevents the administration from implementing the staffing changes. Separately, the administration sought to pause a pending full-bench appeal at the appeals court, where judges had signaled skepticism about arguments made by the government that federal courts lack authority to block a near-total dismissal of CFPB staff.
Legal fights over the administration's initial effort to remove nearly all CFPB personnel had been underway until now. Lawyers representing an employee union and other parties had contended that firing such a large share of staff would be unlawful and would leave the agency unable to carry out responsibilities Congress assigned it when creating the bureau in 2010.
Advocates and critics have clashed sharply over the bureau's fate. President Donald Trump and certain senior administration officials had called for the CFPB's outright elimination, accusing the agency of politicized enforcement and imposing undue burdens on businesses. Those positions were rejected by advocates, who described the proposals as an unlawful benefit to politically connected corporate actors and warned they would endanger consumer protections.
The Justice Department's recent filing asserts the revised plan shows the administration does not intend to shutter the CFPB completely, a finding at odds with a lower court's earlier determination that the government planned a full shutdown. The motion submitted on Tuesday would pause the active full-bench appeal while the court considers whether the stay blocking implementation should be lifted.
CFPB representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Context limitations - The filing and court activity described here are drawn from the Justice Department's submission to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Details beyond the contents of that filing and the court docket are not provided in the documents cited, and further developments will depend on the appeals court's actions.