Attorney General Ellison sues Trump Administration to protect consumers, stop illegal defunding of CFPB 

CFPB has returned $21B to 205M Americans over 14 years; has received 46K complaints from Minnesotans in just the last three years

December 22, 2025 (SAINT PAUL) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison today joined a coalition of 22 attorneys general in suing U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and others 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, Russell 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.

As Attorney General Ellison and the coalition argue, this will have devastating impacts on consumers and severely disrupt states’ consumer protection abilities, which rely on consumer complaints and data from CFPB. Attorney General Ellison and the coalition 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. 

“I have strongly supported the CFPB, as both Attorney General and a member of Congress, from the time it was just a concept through now, and I don’t intend to stop,” Attorney General Ellison said. “Attorneys general have broad powers in state and federal law to protect consumers, and I use all the tools available to me, but we need a national arm focused on protecting consumers from a wide range of financial predators and harms, as the Great Recession and subsequent mortgage crisis showed us far too painfully. The CFPB has provided billions in release to millions of Americans over the last 14 years, so it comes as no surprise that the billionaires in charge of the White House want to gut it and line their pockets instead. I’m banding together with attorneys general to keep that from happening.”

Today’s lawsuit is a logical extension of Attorney General Ellison’s longtime advocacy for the CFPB. As a member of Congress, he co-sponsored the bill that founded it in 2011 in order to provide more protections for American consumers in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession and housing and mortgage crisis. In February 2025, he joined a coalition of attorneys general in an amicus brief warning a court about the Trump Administrations’ attempt to defund and disband the CFPB. In March 2025, he published an opinion in the Minnesota Star Tribune similarly defending the CFPB’s long record of helping consumers in Minnesota and across the United States and warning against Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s efforts to defund it.

Established in the wake of the Great Recession, CFPB is an independent agency funded entirely 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 related to consumer financial products.

States also regularly refer consumer complaints to CFPB for further assistance. From just 2022 through 2025, Minnesotans filed more than 46,000 complaints with the CFPB. As Attorney General Ellison and the coalition argue, completely defunding CFPB will eliminate this important resource for resolving complaints and securing justice for cheated consumers.   

In November, Vought took a novel position that the agency can only be funded by the Federal Reserve’s “profits,” which he asserted are currently nonexistent. Vought therefore made the decision not to request any funding from the Federal Reserve, making it all but certain that CFPB will run out of funding completely in January 2026.  

Attorney General Elison and the coalition argue that Vought’s decision not to seek any funding for CFPB is unlawful and unconstitutional. The CFPB has a legal obligation to provide states with consumer complaints – a duty it will not be able to fulfill without the necessary funds. Completely eliminating CFPB funding also violates the Separation of Powers principle, as the agency was established by Congress, which also created a process for it to regularly receive funding from the Federal Reserve. Attorney General Ellison 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 Ellison in filing this lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.