Trump Cancels CFPB’s DEIA Activities As Judge Weighs Inunction

The Trump administration is ending diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while a federal judge in Washington considers an order to preserve the agency’s work.

Acting CFPB Director Russell Vought formally eliminated “any and all” DEIA activities at the agency in a memorandum sent to staff Wednesday and obtained by Bloomberg Law.

“No staff, budget, training, facilities or technologies shall be dedicated to DEIA,” the memorandum, sent by Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez, said.

The memorandum outlined several internal operations that would be affected, such as employee affinity groups and “consideration of DEIA” in decision-making. Vought also said email signature blocks could no longer include preferred pronouns.

The CFPB is responsible for supervising companies for compliance with fair lending laws such as the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and some agency staffers said they were unclear whether the memo would apply to those efforts.

The CFPB is also required by law to compile annual fair lending reports for Congress.

Vought’s memo additionally bars the CFPB from “gathering and analysis of data relating to DEIA, and publishing reports.”

The memo applies only to internal DEIA policies and activities, an agency source familiar with the matter said.

Court Injunctions

A Maryland federal judge put a hold last month on portions of executive orders from President Donald Trump targeting DEIA programs across the federal government.

In a separate case, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia said at a hearing Tuesday she was “leaning” toward granting a preliminary injunction that would force the CFPB to continue doing congressionally mandated work, such as maintaining its consumer complaint apparatus and issuing required reports.

The CFPB reached a deal last month with the National Treasury Employees Union and other plaintiffs to hold off on the mass firing of employees and Vought’s stop-work orders while Jackson considers the injunction.

The webpage for the CFPB’s Office of Minority and Women Inclusion remained active on the agency’s website as of Wednesday morning, although a job posting for a director of that office was taken down.

Other federal banking regulators—including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Federal Reserve, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency—took down their diversity and inclusion webpages earlier this year in response to Trump’s executive orders.