The National Treasury Employees’ Union pushed back against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s most recent workforce reduction plan Friday, calling the request for a 45-day window of consideration unnecessary.
“This Court should reject the defendants’ request to impose an artificial deadline,” the NTEU wrote Friday to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. “Their own actions … demonstrate that this is not an emergency warranting this Court’s extraordinary relief.”
The NTEU noted that the CFPB’s latest workforce reduction plan, which it shared with the appeals court March 31, comes more than a year after a district judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing the bureau from enacting job cuts.
“There is no reason to force the plaintiffs or the district court, which has moved expeditiously throughout the litigation, into emergency proceedings, when there is no emergency,” the NTEU wrote Friday.
The CFPB argued, when it floated the plan, that a reduction in force would be necessary by the fourth quarter of 2026 unless there is a revised staffing plan.
The NTEU acknowledged Friday that the CFPB was right to seek the district court’s opinion first. The workers’ union, however, blasted the bureau for “seek[ing] to circumvent” that court by “styling their request as a ‘motion to modify’” the appeals court’s order in the case.
“However the motion is titled, it seeks relief that the defendants have not yet sought in the district court,” the NTEU wrote. “Even if the defendants’ request were properly before this Court, it should be denied. The defendants have not even tried to satisfy the requirements to stay the preliminary injunction.”
The CFPB’s court battle continues as another long-running facet of the bureau’s right-sizing plan came to light last week.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency terminated the lease for the CFPB’s Washington headquarters and transferred the property to the General Services Administration, according to records obtained by Reuters through the Freedom of Information Act and first reported Wednesday.
The transfer occurred in February, roughly a year after the CFPB first sought to end the lease.
Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said there were "costs and risks" associated with managing the property, and that being the CFPB's landlord "does not advance the OCC’s mission,” according to a Feb. 12 letter to the GSA seen by Reuters.
The lease termination comes six years early. The original 20-year lease required the CFPB to pay roughly $11.4 million in rent to the OCC for 2012, with the amount increasing by 2% each year. The February transfer came at no cost, but it was unclear whether the CFPB would pay rent to the GSA.
