CFPB halts plan to force regional workers to move to DC

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• Key insight: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has reversed its “mandatory” relocation order for remote workers who were previously based in regional offices that the Trump administration has closed. 

• What’s at stake: The reversal is a reprieve for roughly 450 regional employees, who initially faced a Nov. 2 deadline to start working from the Washington, D.C., office.
   

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has halted a plan that would have forced regional employees to move to Washington, D.C., after initially threatening to fire workers who refused to comply. 
The CFPB has “no plans in the short term” to reissue forced-relocation notices to remote workers outside the D.C. area, the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 335 said Friday in an email to its members.

The about-face is a reprieve for the roughly 450 employees stationed remotely or assigned to the bureau’s former regional offices in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and San Francisco, which were shut down last year by the CFPB’s acting director at the time, Russell Vought.

Following an agreement between the CFPB and NTEU Local 335, a federal judge in July ordered the bureau not to cut its workforce until the Senate confirms a new CFPB director.  

Vought’s stated goal has been to put civil servants “in trauma,” as part of the effort to reduce the size of the federal workforce. He tried to fire the majority of the CFPB’s staff last year, but after the NTEU filed suit, a judge stopped the bureau from issuing reduction-in-force orders. Last month, another federal judge invalidated Vought’s efforts to block the CFPB from requesting funding from the Federal Reserve. 

The bureau employed 1,750 people at the end of the Biden administration. That number had fallen to 1,072 by Aug. 1, 2026, according to the NTEU.

In June, the CFPB moved to a new headquarters at 445 12th St. NW in Washington, D.C.. The space is designed to accommodate just 550 employees, which is the Trump administration’s staffing target for the bureau.

The NTEU said the Department of Justice notified the agency last week that its return-to-office plan had been halted indefinitely, according to the union’s email, obtained by American Banker. About 200 regional staffers have left their jobs at the bureau since the order was issued over the summer.

The NTEU’s Chapter 335 said the reversal is a win for its members and the embattled agency. 

“Another return-to-office delay is a relief for our hundreds of remote and home duty-stationed workers, and a big win for the CFPB’s continued existence and the public we serve,” the union said.

The CFPB also agreed to rescind notices that “ordered workers to respond under threat of termination,” the NTEU’s email said. 

The shift comes as the CFPB is waiting for the Senate to confirm President Trump’s pick to lead the agency. The nomination of Brian Johnson, a former No. 2 at the CFPB in the first Trump administration, has been voted out of the Senate Banking Committee. But Johnson has yet to receive a confirmation vote in the full Senate. That’s expected to happen sometime between the midterm elections and the end of 2026, sources said.

At his confirmation hearing in July, Johnson said he keeps an “open mind” about CFPB staffing levels. He also deflected questions from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., about what she described as blatant pay-to-play schemes, with the bureau dropping major enforcement cases against presidential donors.

The retreat by the CFPB’s management is part of a wave of legal setbacks for the Trump administration, as employees at many federal agencies push back on return-to-office policies.

Under the mandate issued in July, the CFPB had said that it planned to extend the deadline to Nov. 2 for civil servants to respond on whether they would comply. 

The union said Friday that its members “have been wondering if those new notices were coming. Now we know: no new notices, and no November 2 deadline.” 

“Phase 4 workers will NOT be required to accept or decline a geographic reassignment by November 2, as we were told … in July,” the union said. 

Phase 4 refers to those CFPB employees who were stationed in the bureau’s regional outposts that have been closed.

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Vought has drastically reduced the CFPB’s physical footprint as part of a stated goal of shrinking or potentially closing the bureau entirely. 

In early 2026, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency terminated the CFPB’s lease for its headquarters at 1700 G Street NW, roughly six years before the lease’s scheduled expiration in 2032. The bureau’s headquarters was transferred to the General Services Administration, the agency responsible for managing federal real estate.  

Vought is the director of the Office of Management and Budget and also special advisor to the CFPB. He served as the acting director of the CFPB from early 2025 to mid-2026 before being succeeded by Mark Paoletta, who also holds two jobs in the Trump administration, including OMB general counsel. 

A spokesperson for the OMB, who also serves as a CFPB spokeswoman, did not respond to requests for comment.