In a decision certain to shake Washington’s regulatory towers, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with the Trump administration’s push to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s independence.
The Daily Wire reported that the court’s ruling overturned a previous injunction that had blocked President Trump's efforts to overhaul the agency, handing the administration a decisive legal win in a contentious battle over executive authority and bureaucratic sprawl.
Earlier this year, President Trump took the first direct step by ousting Rohit Chopra, the CFPB director appointed under President Joe Biden.
The action wasn't just symbolic—it signaled the administration’s clear intent to rein in an agency long criticized for operating well beyond its statutory leash.
After Chopra’s removal, acting director Russell Vought wasted no time. He instructed all CFPB staff to halt operations and began shuttering the agency’s headquarters—moves that predictably sparked a wave of lawsuits from entrenched interests.
The National Treasury Employees Union, representing a majority of CFPB employees, raced to court with other plaintiffs to stop what they framed as a hostile takeover.
To their delight, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson granted a preliminary injunction in March, putting a temporary kink in the administration’s rollback plans.
But justice in D.C. is rarely linear. While the district court’s order initially stood, the D.C. Circuit narrowed its scope shortly thereafter, signaling that not all judges were convinced by the plaintiffs’ hand-wringing.
The legal pendulum swung again when the CFPB launched a major reduction-in-force initiative, aiming to downsize most of its workforce—a cost-effective nod toward draining the regulatory swamp.
The D.C. Circuit responded by reinstating the original injunction, suggesting that the court wasn’t quite ready to allow a full-scale dismantling without further debate. But that was far from the final word.
On Friday, the court brought clarity, vacating Jackson’s injunction and effectively allowing the Trump administration to resume its efforts to pare down the CFPB’s reach and footprint.
Administration attorneys had argued that the injunction overstepped judicial boundaries, interfering with the President’s authority to reshape executive agencies. The court agreed, recognizing the inadvisability of short-circuiting lawful authority with sweeping judicial mandates.
And frankly, the CFPB has long insulated itself from public accountability. Established in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank Act, the Bureau is funded by the Federal Reserve and escapes the normal accountability mechanisms that govern nearly every other federal agency.
In plain English, it takes taxpayer dollars without congressional oversight—an arrangement that leaves both voters and lawmakers on the sidelines while federal regulators act like a government unto themselves.
By 2015, critics like Investor’s Business Daily had raised alarm bells about the Bureau channeling settlement funds to groups with political ties, specifically poverty groups linked to Democratic interests. The Heritage Foundation likewise flagged the CFPB’s questionable use of its Civil Penalty Fund.
These weren’t isolated accusations but symptoms of a pattern: when an agency controls billions with no meaningful oversight, the temptation to mission-creep becomes institutionalized.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said it best in 2022, taking aim at the CFPB’s financial opacity. By operating outside congressional appropriations and oversight, the Bureau had become, in its words, “no longer dependent, and as a result, no longer accountable.”
The D.C. Circuit’s decision brings a needed course correction. It's a reminder that unrestrained agencies—even those launched under good intentions—can drift dangerously far from constitutional limits.
This ruling doesn’t eliminate the CFPB, but it rightly reasserts the executive’s authority to reduce its size and revisit its scope. Reform doesn’t require revenge—just responsibility, something the CFPB has avoided for far too long.