In 2010, Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency with the sole mission of protecting Americans from harmful practices of the financial services industry, and consolidated the federal consumer protection responsibilities of seven existing agencies in the CFPB. Since its creation, the CFPB has successfully protected consumers from unfair and predatory practices in the financial services industry, returning over $21 billion in restitution to consumers.  

But the Trump administration is attempting to unilaterally eliminate the CFPB without congressional authorization. His administration abruptly laid off or furloughed thousands of CFPB employees and froze funding for the CFPB’s vital consumer protection programs.   

Groups representing current and former CFPB employees, as well as non-profit consumer advocacy organizations, challenged the administration’s actions in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The district court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, which the defendants appealed to the circuit court. In May 2025, CAC filed an amicus brief on behalf of Current and Former Members of Congress urging the court to affirm the preliminary injunction. Our brief made three principal points.  

First, Congress has the sole authority to create, restructure, and abolish federal departments and agencies. The Constitution provides that “[a]ll legislative Powers,” including power over the existence of executive offices, “shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” It also grants Congress the exclusive power to “carr[y] into Execution” not only the “foregoing Powers” but also “all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”  These provisions authorize Congress to pass laws creating executive departments, agencies, and offices. Indeed, some of the first statutes Congress passed created our nation’s first executive departments. Congress also has the power to restructure or abolish agencies as it finds necessary, and it has exercised this power since its earliest days.   

Second, historical practice demonstrates that when Congress wants to give the President authority to reorganize the executive branch, it does so through legislation. From 1932 to 1984, Congress gave the President reorganization authority by passing and renewing a series of laws known as the Reorganization Acts. The history of these laws confirms that when Congress believes that delegating its reorganization power to the President will promote efficiency in government, it knows how to make such a delegation while at the same time limiting the scope of that delegation to protect against presidential overreach.  

Third, the CFPB is a statutorily mandated agency, and President Trump does not have the power to abolish it unilaterally. The creation of the CFPB following the 2008 financial crisis is a quintessential example of Congress exercising its power over the shape of the executive branch. Without the CFPB, there would be no federal regulator charged with making sure that banks comply with the rules protecting consumers from deceptive practices. And state regulators cannot fill this gap on their own, particularly given the CFPB’s exclusive authority to supervise our nation’s largest banks, savings associations, and credit unions, not to mention its oversight over non-bank financial institutions like payday lenders and mortgage companies. Abolishing the CFPB or reducing it in size to the point that it is incapable of fulfilling its statutory mandates would thus not only harm American consumers, but would also “trigger a major regulatory disruption and would leave appreciable damage to Congress’s work in the consumer-finance arena,” as the Supreme Court once stated.   

In August 2025, the court vacated the district court’s preliminary injunction on jurisdictional grounds. The majority held that the court does not have jurisdiction to review the employees’ claims because, in its view, those claims must proceed under the Civil Service Reform Act’s review scheme and that it does not have jurisdiction over the other plaintiffs’ claims under the Administrative Procedure Act or in equity. 

Judge Pillard dissented, taking the position that the majority’s view of the court’s jurisdiction “contravenes statutes, precedent, and basic principles of our constitutional government.” Citing our brief, Judge Pillard highlighted the extensive history of the CFPB and its vital role in protecting American consumers, and she underscored that only Congress has the power to abolish the Bureau. As Judge Pillard explains, “it is emphatically not within the discretion of the President or his appointees to decide that the country would benefit most if there were no Bureau at all.” 

The plaintiffs filed a petition for rehearing en banc and, in September 2025, CAC filed another amicus brief urging the full D.C. Circuit to grant en banc review. Our brief made two main points.

First, we explained that the President’s unilateral elimination of a federal agency violates the Constitution’s separation of powers because Congress has the sole authority to create, restructure, or abolish federal agencies. We again detailed the history of past Presidents deferring to Congress in this regard and taking action to eliminate federal agencies only when expressly delegated that authority by Congress.

Second, we explained that the plaintiffs’ constitutional separation-of-powers claim is judicially reviewable under the Supreme Court’s decision in Dalton v. Specter. The panel decision in this case misreads Dalton’s holding that “all executive actions in excess of statutory authority” are not “ipso facto unconstitutional” to mean that no executive action in excess of statutory authority is ever unconstitutional. Yet Dalton itself makes clear that plaintiffs may bring a constitutional challenge whenever the President violates the Constitution—including when, to use Dalton’s language, there is “a want of [Presidential] power” rather than “a mere excess or abuse of discretion in exerting a power given.” The plaintiffs here allege such a want of power—namely, that Congress has not authorized the President to abolish the CFPB—and thus have a viable constitutional claim that President Trump’s efforts to eliminate the agency unilaterally usurped one of Congress’s exclusive powers. We explained that this case is comparable to Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), the archetypal separation-of-powers case, and that the full D.C. Circuit should grant rehearing to correct the panel holding that forecloses the plaintiffs’ constitutional challenge.