CFPB Must Keep Requesting Its Funding, Federal Court Rules Again

A federal court in Oregon ruled on September 28 that the CFPB’s leadership acted unlawfully by refusing to request the Bureau’s funding from the Federal Reserve — the latest, and so far most decisive, defeat for an effort to defund the agency that’s now stretched across three separate courts and more than a year.

The dispute traces back to February 2025, when Acting Director Russ Vought told the Federal Reserve the CFPB would not request its unappropriated funding, arguing the agency could decline to draw funds whenever the Fed itself wasn’t turning a profit. The Bureau warned at the time that it would exhaust its available cash by early 2026.

Courts have not agreed with that reading. In December 2025, Judge Amy Berman Jackson in D.C. rejected the funding-lapse argument outright, calling it an “unsupported and transparent attempt” to sidestep an existing court order and ruling that the CFPB must continue requesting funds. Separately, Judge Edward Davila in the Northern District of California held that the statute’s “combined earnings” language means the Federal Reserve’s combined revenue, not its profit — meaning the funding trigger the administration was relying on doesn’t exist in the way it argued. The CFPB appealed that ruling to the Ninth Circuit in May 2026, though it has continued complying with the order while the appeal sits unresolved.

The September 28 ruling adds a third front. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, leading a coalition of 22 state attorneys general who sued in December 2025, won summary judgment in the District of Oregon. The court found that withholding the funding request violated the separation-of-powers clause and ordered funding restored so the Bureau could continue operating as Congress structured it — including maintenance of the consumer complaint database that states rely on for their own enforcement work.

None of this resolves the underlying fight. The Ninth Circuit appeal is still pending, and the administration has not said whether it will pursue further appeals following the Oregon ruling. What’s changed is that three separate courts, applying three different legal theories, have now reached the same conclusion: the CFPB cannot be starved out by simply declining to ask for its funding.

For dealers and lenders, the practical takeaway hasn’t moved. Nothing in this ruling changes reporting obligations, examination authority, or how complaints are handled day to day — the litigation is about whether the agency stays funded, not about what it does with that funding once it has it. The more relevant signal is one of durability: an agency some assumed might simply run out of money and go quiet has instead had its funding obligation reaffirmed by courts three separate times. Compliance and legal teams treating the CFPB’s staffing and enforcement posture as a reason to deprioritize readiness should treat that assumption as increasingly shaky.