Lawsuit filed this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon
Attorney General Dan Rayfield today led a coalition of attorneys general in suing the Trump administration to stop the complete defunding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has returned more than $21 billion improperly taken from over 205 million Americans throughout its 14-year existence. The CFPB’s current acting director, Russel Vought, is attempting to completely defund the agency by refusing to request any funding from the Federal Reserve, which will virtually guarantee the agency runs out of money in January 2026.
“The CFPB is a watchdog that gets results. Take what happened with Equifax,” said Attorney General Rayfield. “The credit reporting agency failed to fix errors on people’s credit reports, allowed bad information to resurface, and sold credit scores that weren’t accurate. Those are all mistakes that can keep Oregonians from getting housing, or affordable credit. When powerful companies cut corners, someone has to stand up for everyday people and demand accountability.”
In that example, Equifax was ordered to pay $15 million to the CFPB’s victims relief fund this year and bring its dispute resolution processes into compliance with federal law. As Attorney General Rayfield and the coalition argue, the attempt to defund CFPB will have devastating impacts on consumers and severely disrupt states’ consumer protection abilities, which rely on consumer complaints and data from the agency. The attorneys general argue that CFPB has a legal requirement to collect and process consumer complaints and share that complaint data with states, and that Vought’s actions violate the law and the Constitution. The lawsuit seeks a court order preventing the administration from completely defunding CFPB.
Established in the wake of the Great Recession, CFPB is an independent agency funded by the Federal Reserve focused on regulating financial institutions and products to protect consumers. The CFPB writes and enforces rules to regulate financial institutions, collects critical economic data, and fields millions of consumer complaints every year. In addition, CFPB is the only federal agency authorized to supervise the nation’s largest banks for their compliance with consumer financial protection laws.
Beyond its own consumer protection actions, CFPB is legally mandated to provide vital information to states to aid their own consumer protection efforts. States rely on consumer complaints from CFPB to investigate wrongdoing, secure refunds and restitution for consumers, and support their own litigation against financial institutions. For example, CFPB collects demographic and geographic lending data under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which states use to protect homebuyers from discriminatory lending.
States also regularly refer consumer complaints to CFPB for further assistance. In 2024, CFPB received 3 million consumer complaints – 8,800 of those were from Oregonians – which was a 51% increase from the year before. Last year, companies provided more than $700,000 in direct relief to Oregon consumers after those consumers made complaints through the CFPB portal. As Attorney General Rayfield and the coalition argue, completely defunding CFPB will eliminate this important resource for resolving complaints and securing justice for cheated consumers.
Attorney General Rayfield and the coalition are seeking a court order preventing the administration from carrying out its decision not to request any funds for CFPB and ordering the agency to request funding from the Federal Reserve to fulfill its duties as required by the law.
Joining Attorney General Rayfield in filing this lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.