A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from effectively dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an early target of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson barred the administration from stopping work and firing employees at the CFPB and ordered the reinstatement of previously terminated workers. She also blocked the destruction of any CFPB records and ordered the recission of any “wholesale” contract cancellations issued on or after Feb. 11. 

Jackson opened her decision quoting Musk’s post to the social platform X spelling doom for the agency: “RIP CFPB.” 

"In sum, 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,” Jackson wrote in her 112-page opinion. 

The National Treasury Employees Union and other groups sued acting CFPB Director Russell Vought last month over the agency’s apparent dismantling, arguing the effort violates the separation of powers between the branches of government.  

After Vought was confirmed as director of the Office of Management and Budget, he was also tapped to serve as acting CFPB director. He quickly ordered employees to “cease all supervision and examination activity” and temporarily shut down the agency’s headquarters, before directing employees to halt work altogether and terminating dozens of probationary employees. 

The Trump administration has insisted it does not plan to eliminate the agency, pointing to the president’s nomination of Jonathan McKernan to serve as CFPB director and Vought’s plans to streamline the consumer watchdog. 

However, several CFPB employees have said they were told the administration plans to “wind down” the agency, eliminating all but five employees and moving its statutorily required functions elsewhere. 

Amid discrepancies between the two sides, Jackson held a two-day evidentiary hearing as she weighed whether to grant the union’s request to block the Trump administration from taking various actions at the agency. 

“The more paper you file, the less clear it gets,” Jackson said last month, before scheduling the hearings. 

Jackson temporarily barred administration officials from firing employees without cause or ordering a reduction in force in mid-February, after the union raised concerns that mass layoffs were imminent.  

Internal emails and testimony from two CFPB employees indicate the administration was planning to cut nearly 1,200 workers out of the agency’s staff of 1,700 on the day the judge’s order went into effect. 

The administration also planned to cut more employees in a second phase, in which the agency would “reduce altogether,” one employee testified. The plans to conduct mass layoffs remain intact, and staff have continued to have meetings about the cuts, according to the employee, who took the stand under the pseudonym Alex Doe. 

Deepak Gupta, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said during the hearing last month that if the judge had not issued such an order, “there would be no agency to preserve.” 

Jackson said in Friday’s opinion that the evidence revealed the administration was “in fact engaged in a concerted, expedited effort to shut the agency down entirely” prior to her February order. 

“The fact that the effort was temporarily stymied or slowed down by the Court’s intervention and entry of a consent order to freeze the situation does not mean that the decision is not yet finalized or that it was ever abandoned,” she wrote. 

The judge also said that Trump is free to turn to Congress to shutter the agency — but his administration’s efforts to shut it down thus far were likely unlawful. 

"While the President is free to propose legislation to Congress to accomplish this aim, the defendants are not free to eliminate an agency created by statute on their own, and certainly not before the Court has had an opportunity to rule on the merits of the plaintiffs’ challenge,” Jackson said.  

The testimony from Doe and a fellow CFPB employee at times contradicted that of a top agency official, who painted a less dire picture of the current state of affairs at the consumer watchdog.  

Adam Martinez, the CFPB’s chief operating officer, detailed the “chaos” and “confusion” that ensued after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) arrived at the agency in early February. 

However, he suggested there’s “less confusion today,” noting the agency is functioning at the level required by law. Several CFPB offices received authorization to resume work in early March, after Mark Paoletta, the agency’s chief legal officer, sent an email clarifying that staff should be performing statutorily required work. 

“DOGE came in with a very hard fist, so to speak,” Martinez said, adding, “When the [Office of Management and Budget] director’s team came in, I felt the adults were around the table at that point.”   

This story was updated at 5:13 p.m.