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Federal Judge Halts CFPB Purge Again - The American Prospect
Judge Amy Berman Jackson has once again stopped Russ Vought and the DOGE team from firing virtually all of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau staff. After a Thursday purge that terminated close to 90 percent of all CFPB employees, totaling 1,483 workers, and left it with a skeleton crew of 207 to carry out dozens of statutory obligations, Judge Jackson held a tense show cause hearing on Friday morning and issued an oral order saying the firing “is not happening today.” An evidentiary hearing has been set for April 28.
According to a declaration from an anonymous CFPB employee filed with the court on Friday, Gavin Kliger, a DOGE official detailed to the agency, managed the mass reduction in force (RIF). “He kept the team up for 36 hours straight to ensure that the notices would go out yesterday (April 17),” the employee, known by “Alex Doe,” stated. “Gavin was screaming at people he did not believe were working fast enough to ensure they could go out on this compressed timeline, calling them incompetent.”
In the hearing, chief operating officer Adam Martinez claimed to not know what Kliger’s involvement was with the RIF. He said that acting CFPB chief legal officer Mark Paoletta, a pal of Clarence Thomas’s, gave all instructions on the mass purge.
The CFPB was attempting to exploit a loophole opened by an appeals court allowing the agency to reduce its force, but only after a “particularized assessment” of each employee and whether the force reductions and stoppage of work would affect any statutory obligations. According to the Alex Doe declaration, individuals working on the RIF asked whether the particularized assessment was made, “but they were told that all that mattered was the numbers.” Mark Paoletta, according to the declaration, said that “leadership would assume the risk” of violating the court order.
According to a declaration from an anonymous CFPB employee filed with the court on Friday, Gavin Kliger, a DOGE official detailed to the agency, managed the mass reduction in force (RIF). “He kept the team up for 36 hours straight to ensure that the notices would go out yesterday (April 17),” the employee, known by “Alex Doe,” stated. “Gavin was screaming at people he did not believe were working fast enough to ensure they could go out on this compressed timeline, calling them incompetent.”
In the hearing, chief operating officer Adam Martinez claimed to not know what Kliger’s involvement was with the RIF. He said that acting CFPB chief legal officer Mark Paoletta, a pal of Clarence Thomas’s, gave all instructions on the mass purge.
The CFPB was attempting to exploit a loophole opened by an appeals court allowing the agency to reduce its force, but only after a “particularized assessment” of each employee and whether the force reductions and stoppage of work would affect any statutory obligations. According to the Alex Doe declaration, individuals working on the RIF asked whether the particularized assessment was made, “but they were told that all that mattered was the numbers.” Mark Paoletta, according to the declaration, said that “leadership would assume the risk” of violating the court order.
https://prospect.org/justice/2025-04-18-federal-judge-halts-cfpb-purge-again/
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