Attorney General Phil Weiser sues Trump administration to defend important consumer protection efforts

Dec. 22, 2025 (DENVER) — Attorney General Phil Weiser today joined a coalition of attorneys general in suing the Trump administration to stop the complete defunding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or 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.

“The CFPB’s mission—protecting consumers against irresponsible companies—is worth fighting for,” said Attorney General Weiser. “In Colorado, we are using every tool we have to ensure that consumers who are struggling to make ends meet are protected against predatory companies. Consumers are better protected with the CFPB as a check on such conduct; that’s why we are suing Russell Vought for his lawless and reckless decision to defund the agency.”

Established in the wake of the Great Recession, the CFPB is an independent agency funded entirely by the Federal Reserve and 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 that the states use to protect homebuyers from discriminatory lending.

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.

The attorneys general argue that Vought’s decision not to seek any funding for CFPB is unlawful and unconstitutional. Completely eliminating CFPB funding also violates the constitutional commitment to the Separation of Powers, as the agency was established by Congress, which also created a process for it to regularly receive funding from the Federal Reserve. The coalition is 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 Weiser in filing this lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.

Read the filed complaint (PDF).

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Media Contact:
Lawrence Pacheco
Chief Communications Officer
(720) 508-6553 office
lawrence.pacheco@coag.gov