The deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Sunday night sued President Trump in order to block Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney from taking over as acting director of the agency.
Leandra English, who was tapped by former Director Richard Cordray to be the acting director, filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against Trump and Mulvaney, whom the president nominated to be CFPB’s interim leader.
The office of the CFPB’s head council is expected to challenge her suit, claiming Trump has the authority to override the bureau’s line of succession, Reuters reported Sunday night.
English’s complaint claims that she is the rightful acting director of the CFPB, and that the court should bar Mulvaney from taking the post. English claims that the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act that lay out the CFPB’s line of succession supersedes the Federal Vacancies Act, which Trump used to nominate Mulvaney.
“The president’s purported or intended appointment of defendant Mulvaney as Acting Director of the CFPB is unlawful,” the complaint reads. The suit calls Trump’s use of the Vacancies Act “an obvious contravention of Congress’s statutory scheme” that “cannot be reconciled with Dodd-Frank’s mandatory language.”