Judge Orders CFPB: Reinstate Employees, Get Back To Work
A federal judge yesterday ordered the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s leadership, appointed by President Donald Trump, to halt its campaign to hobble the agency. Via CNBC:
In a filing, Judge Amy Berman Jackson sided with the CFPB employee union that sued acting CFPB director Russell Vought last month to prevent him from laying off nearly all of the regulator’s staff. Operatives from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have also been involved in efforts to dismantle the bureau.
“Defendants shall not 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,” Berman said. Berman ordered Vought to reinstate all probationary and term employees fired after Vought took over at the CFPB, said that he shouldn’t “delete, destroy, remove, or impair agency data,” and struck down Vought’s February stop-work order. “To ensure that employees can perform their statutorily mandated functions, the defendants must provide them with either fully-equipped office space, or permission to work remotely” Berman wrote.