CFPB Looks To Shift Lawyers To Jobs Finalizing Trump-Era Rules

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is redeploying its remaining lawyers away from enforcement and fair lending toward rulewriting and litigation defense for contested regulations such as open banking and other “Biden‑era” rules the agency is now reshaping or winding down.

What the article says

• The CFPB has lost roughly half of its attorneys during President Trump’s second term, largely due to layoffs and attrition associated with broader efforts to downsize or effectively shutter the agency.

• Leadership is asking attorneys across the Bureau to transfer into the Legal Division and the Research, Markets, and Regulations Division, with the aim of writing and defending rules rather than pursuing enforcement cases.

• The plan is to “pluck” lawyers from units that are now “largely inoperative,” specifically enforcement and fair lending, and reassign them to work on rulemakings (e.g., open banking / consumer data rights) and to prepare for inevitable industry lawsuits challenging whatever version of those rules survives under Trump.

• This staffing shift sits within a broader strategy: the administration has sharply curtailed enforcement and supervision, attempted to close or starve the CFPB of funding, and is simultaneously using rulemakings and litigation positions to roll back or narrow prior Biden‑era initiatives such as “junk fee” rules, 1071 small‑business lending, nonbank registries, and portions of the open banking regime.

Why it matters

• For enforcement and fair lending, this confirms what you’re already seeing: units are being hollowed out and left mostly idle, with active matters terminated, settled on favorable terms, or handed off to states and private litigants.

• For rulemakings, it signals that the remaining legal capacity will be used to (1) finalize more industry‑friendly versions of inherited rules and (2) build a record and litigation strategy to defend those deregulatory moves in court.

• For industry, the near‑term effect is reduced federal enforcement risk but more legal uncertainty around data access, open banking, and the status of several high‑profile rules now being reworked or partially unwound.