There has been another complication in the Trump administration's effort to shut down the intrusive and arguably unconstitutional Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). On Friday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the dismantling of the CFPB.

The attached excerpt of the decision reads:

The motion for preliminary injunction to be decided boils down to one question: should the Court take action to preserve the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau now, before the case concerning its fate has been resolved? That is an extraordinary step, and before it can step in, the Court must conclude that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in their claims, that they would suffer irreparable harm in the meantime if the Court lets the lawsuit run its course, and that an injunction would be in the public interest.

The Court has made those findings, and the answer is an overwhelming yes: the Court can and must act.

I'm not an attorney, nor do I play one on television, but that doesn't seem like the kind of language one finds in a judicial decision.

Later, the judge states in her decision:

The testimony and the contemporaneous documents suggest that those last minute communications were nothing more than window dressing, and that nothing has changed. The defendants are still engages in an effort to implement a Presidential plan to shut the agency down entirely and do it fast. Absent an injunction freezing the status quo - preserving the agency's data, its occupational capacity, and its workforce - there is a substantial risk that the defendants will complete the destruction of the agency completely in violation of law well before the Court can rule on the merits, and it will be impossible to rebuild.

The Trump administration has, since before President Trump assumed office, made no bones about their intent to abolish the CFPB.

See Also: The CFPB Has New Allies: The Big Banks

Acting CFPB Director Freezes Funding for the Agency

In February, my colleague streiff reported how Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Russ Vought froze funding for the Bureau, claiming that the CFPB already had sufficient funds to continue operations. At that time, streiff wrote:

The beauty of this move is that when Elizabeth Warren set up the CFPB, she attempted to insulate it from influence or management by either the Executive or Legislative branches. Contrary to other agencies that are managed by a group of directors who the president can remove, the CFPB had a single director who could only be removed for cause. The Supreme Court struck down that arrangement in 2020. She also had the CFPB draw funds directly from the Federal Reserve, bypassing the appropriation process. In the best "it isn't a tax" tradition of John Roberts's jurisprudence, that funding arrangement survived a Supreme Court challenge. This combination of events has led to a situation where one man, that would be Russ Vought, can do pretty much as he wishes because there is no Congressional oversight, and he can't be forced to spend money because there are no appropriations.

In short, the CFPB is going to be substantially cut down in size if not altogether eradicated.

That process would seem to be halted, at least for the moment.

The final cure for this matter is, of course, legislative. Congress can act to defund and disestablish the CFPB, and the time to do that would be before the mid-terms, while the Trump administration can be sure of Republican majorities in House and Senate. Unless that happens, it seems likely that this will be litigated for months or years to come.

Another possibility exists, of course: A counter-suit based on the Tenth Amendment. The Constitution includes no enumerated power allowing the CFPB to exist; in a sane world, a Tenth Amendment argument would be enough to have a court strike down the CFPB on constitutional grounds. 

But I think we all know how likely that would be.

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