“Congress created the CFPB, funded it, and gave it a clear mission: protect consumers,” Jackson said in a statement. “No agency official has the authority to override that decision. This lawsuit is about making sure consumers don’t lose a watchdog that has already returned billions of dollars to millions of people who were unfairly treated.”
North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson is suing the Trump administration, claiming that the acting director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has threatened to stop funding the agency’s operations.
In a press release, Jackson’s office noted that, in the 14 years since its founding, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has helped an estimated 205 million Americans recover more than $21 billion from predatory companies. However, under the Trump administration, the agency has largely ceased its enforcement work. Without additional funds, it will likely exhaust its resources sometime in the coming month.
Jackson, a Democrat, said that North Carolina and other states have worked closely with the CFPB since its inception. His office stressed that the Bureau was created by an act of Congress—and that, by terminating its operations, the Trump administration is both skirting federal law and running afoul of the U.S. Constitution.
“Congress created the CFPB, funded it, and gave it a clear mission: protect consumers,” Jackson said in a statement. “No agency official has the authority to override that decision. This lawsuit is about making sure consumers don’t lose a watchdog that has already returned billions of dollars to millions of people who were unfairly treated.”
Jackson said that the CFPB, among other things, “enforces rules to regulate financial institutions, collects critical economic data, and fields millions of consumer complaints every year. It is the only federal agency authorized to supervise the nation’s largest banks to make sure they are complying with consumer protection laws and to prevent them from taking advantage of Americans.”
In November, Consumer Financial Protection Breau acting director Russel Vought took “the novel position that the agency can only be funded by the Federal Reserves’ ‘profits.’”
Jackson says that Vought has, as a result, made the decision “not to request any funding from the Federal Reserve.” He, along with other state attorneys general, claims that Vought’s decision is unlawful on several levels. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for instance, was established by an act ofc Congress—Vought, as a consequence, does not or should not have the power to determine how, if, and under what circumstances the agency should continue its operations.
The co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the attorneys general for the District of Columbia and the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
Sources
Attorney General Jeff Jackson Sues to Defend Consumer Protection Funds
Nearly 2 dozen states sue the Trump administration over funding for CFPB
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