CFPB Deputy Director English Resigns, Drops Lawsuit Challenging Mulvaney’s Appointment

Leandra English has announced that she is dropping her lawsuit claiming she is the rightful interim acting director of the CFPB and will be stepping down from her role as the agency’s deputy director.

After the Bureau’s director resigned last November, English sued in federal court for a temporary restraining order to block President Trump’s appointment of Mick Mulvaney as acting director, arguing the appointment violates the provision in the Dodd-Frank Act designating the deputy director as head of the agency in the absence of a director.  The district court denied the restraining order—and subsequently, the preliminary injunction that English sought in her amended complaint—on the grounds that the President had authority under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 to make the appointment.

English has filed an appeal of the decision, but has said she plans to drop the appeal and resign from her position as deputy director in response to the President’s nomination of Kathy Kraninger as the permanent director of the CFPB.

Read the district court opinion denying the preliminary injunction here.