In a striking blow to the Trump administration’s lightning-speed bid to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a federal judge has issued a sweeping order freezing efforts to shut the agency down—calling the move a threat of “irreparable harm” and accusing top officials of playing legal theater.
The ruling comes amid growing chaos unleashed last month after the White House abruptly fired the CFPB’s director, locked employees out of their offices, canceled contracts, and triggered a near-total agency shutdown. Workers arrived to find their roles erased. Elon Musk’s newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) posted a cryptic “CFPB RIP” message on X just hours before DOGE agents reportedly gained access to the building.
But U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson was having none of it.
In a blistering rebuke, she granted nearly all of the demands from unions and consumer advocates who sued to halt what they described as an illegal gutting of a critical federal agency. The plaintiffs argued the White House was trying to erase the CFPB before courts could weigh in—and the judge agreed.
“If the defendants are not enjoined,” Jackson wrote in her opinion, “they will eliminate the agency before the court has the opportunity to decide whether the law permits them to do it.”
Her ruling ordered the CFPB to reinstate fired staff, restore contracts, preserve all agency data, and resume operations—effectively pausing the Trump administration’s attempted demolition.
Judge Jackson didn’t mince words in dismantling the government’s arguments. She rejected Justice Department testimony as “a charade for the court’s benefit,” slammed the CFPB’s top legal officer Mark Paoletta for “insulting the reader’s intelligence,” and described the agency’s COO, Adam Martinez, as visibly torn between “loyalty to his new employers and the truth playing out on his face.”
Consumer advocates hailed the decision as a lifeline. “We were hours away from the agency being wiped out,” said Deepak Gupta, an attorney representing CFPB staff. “This ruling gives us the chance to keep fighting.”
The White House and DOGE declined to comment on the ruling.
The CFPB, created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown, was designed to shield everyday Americans from predatory financial practices. But under Trump—and especially with Musk’s efficiency-obsessed DOGE now in the mix—it became a prime target for demolition.
Now, thanks to a federal bench unwilling to rubber-stamp the purge, the watchdog lives to fight another day.
