US judge orders Trump administration to continue funding consumer watchdog agency
Source: Reuters
March 13, 2026 3:06 PM EDT Updated 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to continue funding the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau indefinitely, saying top officials had unlawfully relied on deficient legal advice to justify their refusal to do so.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Edward Davila of the Northern District of California marked another rebuke from the courts for President Donald Trump's handling of CFPB funding, which he has said should be eliminated. A judge in Washington reached similar conclusions in December. Representatives for the CFPB did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The consumer watchdog's work included addressing financial practices such as predatory lending, excessive fees and counting medical debt in individuals' credit scores.
The administration in its early days virtually eliminated the agency's activities amid attempts to dismiss its workforce en masse. In 2025, the Trump administration declined to fund the agency. In November, it said legal guidance prohibited it from financing the CFPB with money drawn from the Federal Reserve, as designed by Congress, because the Fed was losing money.
In his ruling, Judge Davila found that acting CFPB Director Russell Vought solicited a legal opinion from the Justice Department as a part of a "transparent attempt" to shut the CFPB by relying on a faulty interpretation of the Fed's finances and the law -- an end run around Congress's intent to shield the CFPB "from this exact transparent display of partisanship."
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-orders-trump-administration-continue-funding-consumer-watchdog-agency-2026-03-13/
Link to ORDER (PDF) - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.460880/gov.uscourts.cand.460880.42.0_2.pdf
I remember all the hearings, etc., related to Dodd-Frank, done by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, that created the type of funding mechanism that the agency has so that you couldn't have this type of thing go on (I think it's basically that the regulated industry pays fees into the Federal Reserve to pay for the agency's operation vs having Congress appropriate funds).
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