A federal judge has ordered a halt to attempts under President Donald Trump to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an independent government agency charged with investigating and preventing financial malpractice.
On Friday, US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson granted a request from employees, advocates and union representatives to issue a preliminary injunction, preventing the bureau from being shuttered while court proceedings continue.
“The Court cannot look away or the CFPB will be dissolved and dismantled completely in approximately thirty days, well before this lawsuit has come to its conclusion,” the judge wrote in her order.
She agreed with the plaintiffs that there was a risk of immediate, irreparable harm, given the speed with which the Trump administration’s efforts have unfolded.
“If the defendants are not enjoined, they will eliminate the agency before the Court has the opportunity to decide whether the law permits them to do it,” Berman Jackson wrote.
The ruling was the latest in the myriad court decisions facing the Trump administration’s campaign to streamline the federal government, often through large-scale staffing cuts and the elimination of entire agencies and departments.
Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio even announced he had informed Congress of plans to absorb the US Agency for International Development (USAID) into the State Department, putting its independent functions under executive control.
But critics have questioned whether such manoeuvres are legal. They argue that agencies like USAID and the CFPB were created as independent organisations under Congress and that the president has overstepped his constitutional bounds by overriding those congressional decisions.
The CFPB, in particular, has long been a target of conservative ire.
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