CFPB Continues To Cut Enforcement While Hiring Litigation Attorneys

The CFPB is actively recruiting litigation and appellate attorneys at the same time that its leadership is sharply downsizing and redirecting the enforcement program, so both things are true: they are cutting traditional enforcement capacity while bolstering defensive and rulemaking-focused litigation.

What is being hired

• The Bureau has current postings for Attorney‑Adviser/Litigation Attorney roles in the Office of Litigation, focused on defensive and appellate work in trial and appellate courts.

• These positions explicitly emphasize representing the CFPB in statutory and constitutional challenges to its rulemaking, supervisory, enforcement, and operational activities, and advising leadership on litigation risk and legal compliance.

• CFPB’s own careers page is still advertising “Litigation Attorney” positions and separately touting ongoing recruitment for Enforcement attorneys and non‑attorney enforcement staff.

• Press coverage notes that CFPB is specifically adding appellate attorneys to “strengthen its legal defense” as it faces increasing lawsuits and internal challenges.

What’s happening to enforcement

• During Trump’s second term, CFPB has lost roughly half of its attorneys, with significant cuts and attrition concentrated in enforcement and fair lending, as part of a broader downsizing effort.

• A revised reduction‑in‑force plan reportedly cuts supervision staff from about 350 to 77 and substantially reduces enforcement division headcount as well.

• Separate reporting describes RIF or furlough notices for about 1,500 personnel—around 88% of the workforce—and a 50% cut to inspection operations, with plans to transfer remaining litigation to DOJ.

• Consumer‑side analyses say the new leadership has dropped at least 22 pending enforcement actions and reversed several settlements where companies had already agreed to compensate consumers.

Why hire litigators while cutting enforcement

• As the Bureau scales back active supervision and enforcement, it is simultaneously facing more external litigation challenging its rules, structure, and past actions, especially after funding cuts and restructuring moves backed by the current administration and Congress.

• The Office of Litigation needs specialized appellate and defensive capacity to handle constitutional and administrative challenges to CFPB authority, rules, and restructuring, even if the agency is bringing far fewer new enforcement cases itself.

• Reporting frames the strategy as redeploying remaining lawyers away from enforcement and fair lending and toward rulewriting and defending Trump‑era rules and restructuring decisions, rather than pursuing new enforcement actions in court.

• In other words, the hiring is not about expanding front‑line enforcement; it is about preserving the Bureau’s ability (and leadership’s preferred agenda) to write, revise, and legally defend rules and internal changes while shrinking case‑level enforcement.

How this might play out for industry

• Fewer staff in supervision and enforcement plus dropped cases and reversed settlements suggest materially lower volume and intensity of new CFPB actions against firms in the near term.

• At the same time, you should expect more, and more sophisticated, litigation over the validity and scope of existing and future CFPB rules, including challenges to the revised structure and funding, with a relatively lean but more litigation‑heavy legal division.

• For regulated entities, the practical shift is from frequent supervisory/enforcement friction to a more rules‑driven, litigation‑mediated environment where big issues are fought in appellate courts rather than through serial enforcement actions.