Litigation

The Trump administration is leapfrogging the normal process by taking its fight over a district court injunction blocking efforts to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to a federal appeals court, according to the CFPB workers' union.

The Trump administration continues to battle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's union by seeking a stay of a preliminary injunction that reinstated the CFPB's workforce and contracts and preserved its data.

A Maryland judge temporarily halted mass layoffs of probationary employees at multiple agencies, citing legal violations and harm to states' ability to respond to unemployment needs.

At a court hearing on Monday, lawyers for the Trump administration said statutorily required work is being done by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while the union claimed the government is trying to shut the agency down.

The Justice Department said in a legal brief that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will continue to exist, but said instead that the agency will have fewer employees and a reduced budget under the Trump administration.

Four companies are fighting CFPB enforcement actions by claiming the agency cannot be funded by the Federal Reserve, which has not been profitable since 2022. The consumer bureau calls the new legal theory "meritless."

The high court's much-anticipated ruling gives federal courts — rather than executive agencies — the power to interpret ambiguous statutes. The decision is expected to facilitate an increase in litigation over banking regulations.

A Minnesota trade group and its co-plaintiff, Lake Central Bank, signaled that they plan to appeal a district court's dismissal of their lawsuit against the FDIC. The case involves the agency's guidance on nonsufficient funds fees.

A federal judge in Texas is locked in a back-and-forth with an appeals court over whether the industry's challenge to a cap on credit card late fees should be moved to Washington, D.C.

The Supreme Court issued an opinion Thursday morning that was unequivocal in its view that Congress is constitutionally empowered to fund agencies with open-ended and indirect funding mechanisms, overruling a 5th Circuit opinion from 2022 that found that executive branches must be subject to direct Congressional appropriations.