Federal attorneys at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fired by Trump and Musk are fighting to keep working for consumers

Hanna Hickman worked as an attorney in the private sector for 15 years before making a deliberate pivot. Even though it meant taking a pay cut, she wanted to work for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and help fight banks and other companies that were taking advantage of consumers.

Her colleagues, from other lawyers to young software engineers who could have easily taken Big Tech jobs, had the same motivations. They’re “professionals who could be making and were making quite a bit more money in the private sector,” Hickman says. “But they chose to take their time and talent and bring it to the bureau and fight for consumers.”

And now, nearly 200 of those CFPB employees have had their jobs terminated, Hickman included. The remaining employees have been placed on indefinite administrative leave.

Since CFPB opened in 2011, the agency says its provided consumers with more than $21 billion in relief, from refunds to canceled debt. It capped credit-card late fees and bank-overdraft fees. It banned medical debt from credit reports. The agency’s budget is a tiny 100th of 1% of total federal spending. Nonetheless, earlier this month, more than 10% of its workforce were fired by the Trump administration while Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rifled through the agency’s data. (It’s worth noting that Musk is trying to start a financial product that would likely be regulated by CFPB.)

Congress created the agency after the mortgage crisis of 2008. One of the causes of the financial meltdown was the fact that no agency was focused on regulating consumer financial products and services, including mortgages; fraudulent marketing of mortgages helped lead to the collapse. “Different banking regulators had all these different pieces of authority, but it wasn’t centralized in one place,” says Hickman, who served as senior litigation counsel for CFPB’s enforcement division. “A big part of what contributed to the financial crisis is that the people who were regulating the soundness of banks didn’t have eyes on the consumer-facing conduct.” By pulling enforcement into one agency, Congress wanted to help prevent another financial crisis—and better protect consumers in general.

The agency has done a wide range of work. In a case that wrapped up at the end of last year, for example, the agency started sending $1.8 billion in refund checks to more than four million consumers who had been harmed by “credit repair” companies that charged them hundreds of dollars but didn’t actually help repair their credit. In another case, the agency fined Citi for intentionally discriminating against Armenian Americans. CFPB also required TransUnion to pay consumers who were misled when they tried to freeze their credit and it didn’t work.

When CFPB workers were fired on February 11 and 13, 38 cases were underway against financial companies that broke the law. With the remaining staff ordered to stop all work by Russell Vought, the Trump-appointed acting director (and a Project 2025 architect), “those companies can just keep doing what they were doing,” Hickman says.

Lawsuits are underway now to try to bring back fired staff and restart work. A union for federal workers is suing over the terminations, which shouldn’t be legally permissible without cause. Hickman had been in her position for less than two years, meaning she was a “probationary” employee and had fewer job protections, but still should only have been fired for performance under a specific procedure that didn’t happen. First, every probationary employee was fired; two days later, long-term employees were also fired.

Another lawsuit is trying to stop the dismantling of CFPB itself. Because the agency was created by Congress, the president doesn’t have the authority to shut it down. What’s happening now to CFPB—and many other federal agencies—is unprecedented.

“We are out at the edges of constitutional law right now,” says Hickman. A temporary restraining order is in place that’s supposed to stop further destruction of federal agencies, with a hearing set for March 3. But the Trump administration seems to be ignoring it.

“What’s particularly shocking is that in the meantime, they seem to be just proceeding right along,” she says. “They have canceled the lease on the building. They are prying the signage off the walls. They are proceeding with the dismantling of the agency.”

The lawsuits over the firings will take time, but the lawyers have no intentions of giving up. “Elon Musk and the president picked the wrong bunch of lawyers to mess with,” Hickman said in an interview with ABC News.

“Consumer watchdogs are a talented and tough group of people,” she told Fast Company, “and we know just how few options consumers have to get help when banks and large companies break the law. This is why you’re seeing not just CFPB workers but also our union, other legal-services organizations, and state AGs stepping up to fight for CFPB. We know firsthand how important it is, how much everyday people will suffer, and how the markets will break down if the CFPB isn’t there to do its work.”