Fair Credit

Subscribe to Fair Credit

In August 2018, we reported about significant changes to Connecticut’s licensing laws for consumer financial services providers that were to take effect on October 1, 2018.  In our blog post, we highlighted a new requirement (which appeared to be unprecedented), for sales finance companies to acquire and maintain information about the ethnicity, race, and sex of applicants for motor vehicle retail installment contracts.  A licensee is required to submit the demographic records collected between October 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019 to the Connecticut Banking Department by July 1, 2019.

We observed that the new requirement presented an apparent conflict with the Regulation B proscription against a non-mortgage creditor inquiring about the race, ethnicity or gender of an applicant.  See 12 C.F.R. § 1002.5(b) (“A creditor shall not inquire about the race, color, religion, national origin, or sex of an applicant or any other person in connection with a credit transaction, except as provided in paragraphs (b)(1) [relating to self-testing that complies with Sections 1002.15 of Regulation B] and (b)(2) of this section [authorizing only an optional request to designate a title on an application form such as Ms., Miss, Mr. or Mrs.])

On September 28, the Connecticut Department of Banking issued a memo stating that it has formally asked the CFPB for an official interpretation as to whether the state’s new requirement is consistent with Regulation B.  The Department also indicated that until it receives additional guidance from the CFPB, it “takes a no-action position as the enforcement of the new requirement.”  The Department also stated that it considers the no-action position necessary to provide it with “additional time to undertake a review of the appropriate manner and form for which [the records required to be kept by sales finance companies] shall be acquired, maintained and reported to this Department.”

On September 12, 2018, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (the “Bureau”) issued an interim rule to update two model disclosures following the recent enactment of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (the “Act”).

Pursuant to the Act, nationwide consumer reporting agencies must provide free national security freezes, which prevent potential lenders from accessing a consumer’s report and, in turn, limit an identity thief’s ability to open accounts in the consumer’s name.  The Act also requires that a notice regarding the right to a security freeze be provided to any consumer that receives either the Summary of Consumer Rights or the Summary of Consumer Identity Theft Rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.  The Act’s new requirements take effect on September 21, 2018.

In an effort to help businesses comply with the Act’s requirements, the Bureau’s interim rule updates its model forms to incorporate a security freeze notice and reflect the new minimum duration for initial fraud alerts, which the Act extended from 90 days to one year.  Additionally, the interim rule permits compliance alternatives to assist users of the Bureau’s 2012 model forms.  Specifically, under the interim rule, the Bureau will consider the use of the model forms published on November 14, 2012 in Appendices I and K (or a “substantially similar” form) to comply with the FCRA’s form requirements so long as a separate page containing the following additional information also is provided in the same transmittal: (i) a statement that the minimum duration of initial fraud alerts changed from 90 days to one year effective September 21, 2018, (ii) a notice that consumers have a right to a security freeze, as explained in the new version of Appendix K; and (iii) updated contact information for certain FCRA enforcement agencies.  While this compliance alternative can be used after the interim rule goes into effect later this month, the Bureau has advised that users should discontinue use of the older model forms published on December 21, 2011 no later than September 21, 2018.

The Bureau is currently soliciting comments on the model forms, available at https://www.consumerfinance.gov/documents/6832/bcfp_interim-final-rule_fcra_rights-summaries.pdf.

Consumer advocacy groups are questioning the purported benefits of H.R. 435 the “Credit Access and Inclusion Act of 2017,” a bill that passed with bipartisan support in the House of Representatives in June, and is currently under consideration by the Senate. The new law would amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) to allow landlords (including the Department of Housing and Urban Development), utility companies, and telecommunications providers to provide consumer credit information to consumer credit reporting agencies. According to the House Report about the bill, utility and telecommunications providers today only report negative information, if they report anything at all, due to regulatory uncertainty at the state level. The House Report states that some state regulators have told utility and telecommunications providers that they could not share consumer payment information with consumer reporting agencies. The bill does not purport to expressly preempt any state laws, however.

The bill’s purpose is to provide additional avenues for consumers to build positive credit histories by allowing the reporting of information about lease and utilities payments. Representative Keith Ellison, the sponsor of the bill, explained that “[s]imply by changing how Americans’ financial information is reported to credit rating agencies, this bill will help millions more Americans access credit” including lower lending costs and lower rents.

Whether the law will achieve its intended effects is unclear, however. First, reporting of individual consumer histories would not be mandatory, and thus landlords, utility companies, and telecommunications providers could choose to maintain the status quo and report nothing at all. It seems unlikely that individual landlords and smaller utility companies would find that the benefits of furnishing accurate information to consumer reporting agencies outweigh the costs and risks associated with FCRA compliance. Second, reporting consumer credit information is a double-edged sword; both positive and negative information could be reported, which would hurt some consumers’ credit scores. As reported by the American Banker, some consumer advocacy groups such as the National Consumer Law Center contend that it is better for consumers to have no credit history rather than a negative history. If enacted, some consumers with poor payment histories for housing, utilities, and telecommunication services would undoubtedly be negatively affected by the change.

Companies in sectors potentially affected by these changes to the FCRA, such as housing providers, utilities services, and telecommunications providers, as well as consumer reporting agencies, should pay careful attention as the bill makes its way through the Senate. A version of the bill has already passed the Senate with bipartisan support as part of a larger legislative package in S.488, so chances are good that some version of these changes to the FCRA will be enacted. Hopefully, the bill will be amended to add language expressly preempting state law which would otherwise prohibit utility and telecommunications providers from reporting consumer information to consumer reporting agencies.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) seeking comment on whether its 2013 Disparate Impact Rule (Rule) should be revised in light of the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. 

On July 19, 2018, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. ET, Ballard Spahr attorneys will hold a webinar, “HUD’s Reconsideration of its Disparate Impact Rule: Background, Analysis and Potential Implications.”  Click here to register.

The ANPR provides an important opportunity for the mortgage industry and other interested parties to address whether the Rule reflects the limitations outlined by the Supreme Court in Inclusive Communities and other concerns with the Rule.  Comments on the ANPR must be filed by August 20, 2018.

The Rule provides that liability may be established under the Fair Housing Act (FHA) based on a practice’s discriminatory effect (i.e., disparate impact) even if the practice was not motivated by a discriminatory intent, and that a challenged practice may still be lawful if supported by a legally sufficient justification.  Under the Rule, a practice has a discriminatory effect where it actually or predictably results in a disparate impact on a group of persons or creates, increases, reinforces, or perpetuates segregated housing patterns because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.  The Rule also addresses what constitutes a legally sufficient justification for a practice, and the burdens of proof of the parties in a case asserting that a practice has a discriminatory effect under the FHA.

While the Supreme Court held in Inclusive Communities that disparate impact claims may be brought under the FHA, it also set forth limitations on such claims that “are necessary to protect potential defendants against abusive disparate impact claims.”  In particular, the Supreme Court indicated that a disparate impact claim based upon a statistical disparity “must fail if the plaintiff cannot point to a defendant’s policy or policies causing that disparity” and that a “robust causality requirement” ensures that a mere racial imbalance, standing alone, does not establish a prima facie case of disparate impact, thereby protecting defendants “from being held liable for racial disparities they did not create.”  Significantly, while Inclusive Communities held that liability may be established under the FHA based on disparate impact, the district court subsequently dismissed the disparate impact claim against the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs based on the limitations on such claims prescribed by the Supreme Court in its opinion.

In the ANPR, HUD notes that in response to a notice it published in the Federal Register in May 2017 inviting comments to assist HUD’s identification of outdated, ineffective, or excessively burdensome regulations, it received numerous comments both critical and supportive of the Rule and taking opposing positions on whether the Rule is inconsistent with Inclusive Communities.  HUD also notes that in a report issued in October 2017, the Treasury Department recommended that HUD reconsider applications of the Rule, particularly in the context of the insurance industry.  (We have previously reported on a challenge to the Rule by the American Insurance Association and National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies in D.C. federal district court.)

The ANPR contains a list of 6 questions of particular interest to HUD.   Issues addressed in the questions include the Rule’s: burden of proof standard and burden-shifting framework; the definition of “discriminatory effect” as it relates to the burden of proof for stating a prima facie case; and the causality standard for stating a prima facie case.

Although Inclusive Communities did not resolve the question of whether disparate impact claims are cognizable under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), HUD’s approach to the Rule could have significance for ECOA disparate impact claims.  Recent comments by CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney that the CFPB plans to reexamine ECOA requirements in light of Inclusive Communities suggest that the CFPB might review references to the effects test in Regulation B (which implements the ECOA) and the Regulation B Commentary.  In doing so, the CFPB might consider not only whether such references should be eliminated but also, if they are retained, what safeguards should apply.  As a result, changes to the Rule made by the FHA could impact the CFPB’s approach to ECOA liability.

 

 

 

 

Yesterday afternoon, President Trump signed into law S.J. Res. 57, the joint resolution under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) that disapproves the CFPB’s Bulletin 2013-2 regarding “Indirect Auto Lending and Compliance with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.”  The Government Accountability Office had determined that the Bulletin, which set forth the CFPB’s disparate impact theory of assignee liability for so-called auto dealer “markup” disparities, was a “rule” subject to override under the CRA.

The joint resolution was passed by the Senate in April 2018 by a vote of 51 to 27 and by the House earlier this month by a vote of 234 to 175.  We recently shared our thoughts on the implications of Congressional disapproval.

The CFPB issued a statement about the signing that included a statement from Acting Director Mulvaney that referred to the Bulletin as an “initiative that the previous leadership at the Bureau pursued [that] seemed like a solution in search of a problem.”  Mr. Mulvaney said that “those actions were misguided, and the Congress has corrected them.”

The CFPB stated that the resolution’s enactment “does more than just undo the Bureau’s guidance on indirect auto lending.  It also prohibits the Bureau from ever reissuing a substantially similar rule unless specifically authorized to do so by law.”  Most significantly, the CFPB indicated that it “will be reexamining the requirements of the ECOA” in light of “a recent Supreme Court decision distinguishing between antidiscrimination statutes that refer to the consequences of actions and those that refer only to the intent of the actor” and “the fact that the Bureau is required by statute to enforce federal consumer financial laws consistently.”

This is presumably a reference to the Supreme Court decision in Inclusive Communities and the fact that the ECOA discrimination proscription does not proscribe discriminatory effects but, rather, speaks solely in terms of discrimination “against any applicant on the basis of” race, national origin and other prohibited bases.  As we have observed previously, the basis for the Inclusive Communities holding with respect to the FHA, which is summarized at the end of Section II of the majority opinion, highlights material differences between the FHA and the ECOA.  The distinctions between discrimination statutes that refer to the consequences of actions and those that do not is illustrated vividly by a textual juxtaposition chart that appeared in the House Financial Services Committee Majority Staff Report titled “Unsafe at Any Bureaucracy: CFPB Junk Science and Indirect Auto Lending.”  The Business Lawyer article cited in that report, “The ECOA Discrimination Proscription and Disparate Impact – Interpreting the Meaning of the Words that Actually Are There,” discusses this issue in further detail.  The CFPB’s plans to reexamine ECOA requirements could represent an overture to reviewing references to the effects test in Regulation B (which implements the ECOA) and the Regulation B Commentary.

With regard to the Bulletin’s status as the first guidance document to be disapproved pursuant to the CRA, the CFPB commented that the resolution’s enactment “clarifies that a number of Bureau guidance documents may be considered rules for purposes of the CRA, and therefore the Bureau must submit them for review by Congress.”  The CFPB indicated that it plans to “confer with Congressional staff and federal agency partners to identify appropriate documents for submission.”

 

 

 

 

 

We previously reported that Congress might have the opportunity to disapprove the CFPB’s disparate impact theory of assignee liability for so-called auto dealer “markup” disparities because the CFPB Bulletin describing its theory was determined by the General Accountability Office (GAO) to be a “rule” subject to override under the Congressional Review Act (CRA).  Our hope became a reality late this afternoon when the House of Representatives passed, by a bipartisan vote of 234 to 175, a joint resolution stating that Congress:

“[D]isapproves the rule submitted by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection relating to ‘Indirect Auto Lending and Compliance with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act’ (CFPB Bulletin 2013-02 (March 21, 2013), and printed in the Congressional Record on December 6, 2017, . . . along with a letter of opinion from the [GAO] dated December 5, 2017, that the Bulletin is a rule under the Congressional Review Act), and such rule shall have no force or effect.”

The Senate previously passed this joint resolution on April 18, 2018 by a vote of 51 to 47.  It has been reported that President Trump will sign the joint resolution into law when it is presented to him for executive action.  Like every other legislative measure that is passed by Congress and signed by the President of the United States, the joint resolution of disapproval will be assigned a Public Law number and published in Statutes at Large.  See, e.g., Pub. L. No. 115-74, 131 Stat. 1243 (joint resolution disapproving of CFPB rule relating to arbitration agreements).

The Bulletin

The Bulletin is an official guidance document – a species of what one scholar has characterized as “regulatory dark matter” – that previewed the Bureau’s subsequent ECOA enforcement actions against assignees of automobile retail installment sale contracts (“RISCs”).  It set forth the CFPB’s views concerning what it characterized as a significant ECOA compliance risk associated with an asserted assignee “policy” of “allowing” dealerships to negotiate the retail annual percentage rate (APR) under their RISCs by “marking up” the wholesale buy rate established by a prospective assignee.  The Bulletin’s intent to establish and prioritize a supervisory and enforcement initiative with respect to the asserted practice was unmistakably clear not only from its text, but also from the tag line in the accompanying press release – “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to Hold Auto Lenders Accountable for Illegal Discriminatory Markup.”  Indeed, the blog post that we published on the day the Bulletin was issued was titled “The CFPB previews its coming auto finance fair lending enforcement actions” and the associated webinar that we then hosted was titled, appropriately, “Auto Finance Industry in the CFPB’s Crosshairs.”

The CFPB initiative regarding so-called dealer “mark up” was premised upon what we believe may fairly be characterized, in the parlance of Inclusive Communities, as a disparate impact claim that is “abusive” of banks and sales finance companies that acquire RISCs from independent, unaffiliated dealerships, because it is based on a factual and legal theory that is highly suspect, and in particular seeks to establish causation through the use of statistics alone, which Inclusive Communities holds is improper.  The initiative proved to be highly controversial and became a lightning rod for media, industry, and Congressional criticism of the Bureau.  The industry criticism is probably best reflected and documented in the AFSA study titled “Fair Lending: Implications for the Indirect Auto Finance Market”, an Executive Summary of which is available here.  The congressional criticism included a trilogy of investigative reports prepared by the House Financial Services Committee Majority Staff titled  “Unsafe at Any Bureaucracy: CFPB Junk Science and Indirect Auto Lending,” “Unsafe at Any Bureaucracy, Part II: How the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Removed Anti-Fraud Safeguards to Achieve Political Goals” and “Unsafe at Any Bureaucracy, Part III: The CFPB’s Vitiated Legal Case Against Auto Lenders.”

We also have written previously about some of the many legal and factual flaws inherent in the approach taken by the Bureau and reflected in the now congressionally-disapproved Bulletin.  See, e.g., “The CFPB Stretches ECOA Past the Breaking Point,” CFPB Monitor (Feb. 21, 2013); Auto Finance and Disparate Impact: Substantive Lessons Learned from Class Certification Decisions,” Consumer Fin. Servs. L. Rep., Vol. 18, Issue 21 (May 1, 2015).   Indeed, in our blog post dated February 21, 2013 – one month before the issuance of the Bulletin – we noted that “there are several things about potential enforcement actions in this area that make them profoundly unfair, and which should cause the CFPB to refrain from pursuing enforcement based on this flawed theory.”  Accordingly, it should surprise no one that the Bulletin has become the first guidance document to be disapproved by Congress pursuant to the CRA.

Application of the CRA to the Bulletin

Some have, and others undoubtedly will, criticize this use of the CRA and seek to downplay the significance of the adoption of a Public Law disapproving the Bulletin.  We take issue with these critiques, and have engaged in some spirited “back and forth” with Professor Adam Levitin at Georgetown Law Center regarding this subject.  We previously replied to a message that Prof. Levitin sent to one of us on Twitter after the GAO issued its determination that the Bulletin is a “rule” subject to congressional review.  More recently, Prof. Levitin posted a Credit Slips Blog post titled “Congressional Review Act Confusion:  Indirect Auto Lending Guidance Edition (a/k/a The Fast & the Pointless)” in which he made various assertions regarding the CRA’s applicability to the Bulletin, and the consequences of its disapproval by Congress (in his opinion, basically none).  Since the impact of CRA disapproval of this CFPB Bulletin appears to be the subject of some debate, we wanted to take this opportunity to explain our view about why Congress’ action is so significant.

CRA Definition of a “Rule”

In his blog post, Prof. Levitin asserts that the Bulletin in not a “rule” subject to congressional review for various reasons.  These reasons include suggestions that the CRA only applies to rules that have “effective dates” because the CRA states that a rule may not “take effect” until the rule and its proposed effective date have been reported to each House of Congress and the Comptroller General pursuant to the CRA.  According to Prof. Levitin, this “suggests that the term ‘rule’ in the CRA means what we normally think of as a ‘rule,’ and not some technical definition.”  This argument strikes us as grasping at straws.

While the Bulletin will become the first guidance document to be disapproved pursuant to the CRA, the notion that a guidance document can be a “rule” subject to congressional review is not novel.  The GAO previously determined that other guidance documents can be “rules” subject to congressional review.  For example, as we reported previously, the GAO determined that the Interagency Leverage Lending Guidance issued jointly by the federal bank regulatory agencies on March 22, 2013 “is a general statement of policy and is a rule under the CRA.”  In concluding that the Interagency Leveraged Lending Guidance was a rule subject to the CRA, the GAO relied upon prior GAO opinions (including one issued in 2001) holding that general statements of policy are “rules,” decisional law under the Administrative Procedure Act and floor statements made by the principal sponsor during final congressional consideration of the bill that became the CRA as well as analyses of legal commentators.  Among other things, the principal sponsor had stated that the types of documents covered by the CRA include “statements of general policy, interpretations of general applicability, and administrative staff manuals and instructions to staff that affect a member of the public.”  Agencies thus were on notice that the CRA definition of a “rule” can encompass guidance documents and that this was by design.

With respect to the allusion to a “technical definition” of a “rule,” it is the prerogative of Congress to define statutory terms in a manner that is consistent with the achievement of its legislative objectives.  The legislative intent was to ensure that elected representatives of the People be afforded an opportunity to disapprove “rules” issued by administrative agencies, including certain guidance documents such as the Bulletin that are an example of administrative overreach. In making its determination, the GAO applied the statutory definition in a straightforward, well-reasoned manner.  As for the statutory requirement to include the proposed effective date when reporting a rule to Congress, absent some statutory or regulatory limitation, a guidance document that does not provide for a deferred effective date presumably is effectively immediately.  If such a guidance document is a “rule” (other than a “major rule”) subject to the CRA, “immediately” presumably should mean the date on which it is reported to each House of Congress and the Comptroller General in compliance with the CRA.

Prof. Levitin further suggests that the Bulletin is not a “rule” because it was not “designed” by the Bureau to “interpret law” or “prescribe . . . policy” and it does not have “future effect” because it is non-binding guidance that has no effect.  More specifically, Prof. Levitin asserts that the Bulletin has no future effect because, inter alia, it does not affirmatively state that the Bureau will bring enforcement actions in these circumstances, and it does not specifically and affirmatively state a position of the Bureau.  According to Prof. Levin, while “[p]erhaps there’s an implicit enforcement threat, “it’s pretty oblique” and, in his view, the guidance is merely “a sort of ‘head’s up, there might be compliance issues here that you guys aren’t aware of, so here’s what you should be thinking.”  We respectfully submit, however, that it cannot seriously be contended that the Bulletin was not designed by the Bureau to interpret law or prescribe policy and to have future effect.  To the contrary, the Bulletin was labeled in the CFPB’s own press release as indicating an intent “to Hold Auto Lenders Accountable for Illegal Discriminatory Markup.”  That does not seem oblique to us; it is an explicit statement of future enforcement actions which, in fact, the Bureau was pursuing at the time the Bulletin was released and which became public later in 2013.

Administrative agencies periodically issue official guidance documents to communicate their position with respect to regulatory compliance issues.  While such documents may be literally non-binding, regulatory agencies do not issue official guidance documents in the hope that they will be disregarded by regulated entities.  The regulatory expectation is that entities subject to the regulatory, supervisory and enforcement authorities of the agency will take to heart the views reflected therein.  As regulated entities are well aware, the failure to take official guidance documents seriously can have significant adverse regulatory consequences.  This is true generally and it was certainly true with respect to the Bulletin.

We fail to understand how the Bulletin could fairly be read as anything other than a statement of policy.  As noted previously, the associated CFPB press release included a statement that the Bureau was going “to Hold Auto Lenders Accountable for Illegal Discriminatory Markup.”  Additionally, the concluding sentence in the Bulletin warned industry participants that “[t]he CFPB will continue to closely review the operations of. . . indirect auto lenders, utilizing all appropriate regulatory tools to assess whether supervisory, enforcement, or other actions may be necessary to ensure that the market for auto lending [sic] provides fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory access to credit for consumers.”  (emphasis added).

This enforcement threat was, in fact, explicit and there was nothing oblique about it.  This threat publicly came to fruition nine months later with what the Bureau press release characterized as “the largest-ever settlement in an auto loan discrimination case” that was “the result of a CFPB examination that began in September 2012.”  The CFPB press release stated that the associated Consent Order “demonstrates the type of fair lending risk identified in” the Bulletin “explaining that [the Bureau] would hold indirect auto lenders accountable for unlawful discriminatory pricing.”  (emphasis added).  Notwithstanding the suggestion to the contrary by Prof. Levitin, we believe that the irrefutable evidence of the prescriptive nature and future effect of the Bulletin may be found in the Bulletin itself, the associated CFPB press release, various internal CFPB documents posted on the website of the House Financial Services Committee, four public Consent Orders, and in CFPB publications such as Supervisory Highlights and Fair Lending Reports of the Bureau.  From a big picture perspective, it is abundantly clear that the Bulletin was part of an orchestrated CFPB initiative to effectuate a sea change with respect to the discretionary pricing of retail automotive credit by either eliminating dealer discretion or requiring RISC assignees to impose more restrictive “mark up” limits, perform portfolio-level analyses for “mark up” disparities and promptly remunerate alleged affected consumers if disparities were identified at the portfolio level.  The Bulletin says as much when it discusses the approaches RISC assignees should take to manage the asserted ECOA compliance risk.

Implications of Congressional Disapproval

Much undoubtedly will be written about the implications of Congressional disapproval of the Bulletin, and some will suggest, as Prof. Levitin has in the title of his blog post, that it is a “pointless” exercise.  We respectfully disagree with this point of view, and believe a federal court would disagree as well if the issue were ever to be litigated.

In our “back and forth” with Prof. Levitin, he suggested that a Congressional override of the Bulletin would represent merely a disapproval of the Bureau’s statement of its position.  We responded that, in our view, it would also represent a disapproval of the position reflected in the Bulletin pursuant to a Public Law adopted by the elected representatives of the People stating that “such rule shall have no force and effect.”  It seems to us self-evident that the import of a Public Law disapproving the Bulletin would be a disapproval of the position reflected therein because the “position” is embodied in the “statement” of the position and cannot be disassociated with it.  They are, simply stated, indivisible.

So, what exactly is the substantive centerpiece of the Bulletin that Congress today disapproved?  It is the notion that a RISC assignee has a “policy” of “allowing” dealerships to negotiate the APRs under their RISCs by “marking up” the wholesale buy rate established by a prospective assignee and that disparate impact liability may be predicated upon this “policy” if there are “mark-up” disparities in the portfolio of RISCs acquired by the assignee. One cannot get past the “Background” section of the Bulletin without encountering a reference to supervisory experience of the Bureau confirming that such policies exist and the statement that such discretionary pricing “policies” create a significant risk that they will result in unlawful pricing disparities on a prohibited basis.  The Bulletin proceeds to state that an “indirect auto lender that permits dealer markup and compensates dealers on that basis may be liable for these policies and practices if they result in disparities on a prohibit basis.”  This rule of liability – based on the factual and legal theory set forth in the Bulletin – is the “rule” that Congress has just disapproved.

Viewed from this perspective, if a court is called upon to discern the import of the joint resolution of disapproval in the context of a litigation premised upon this type of disparate impact claim, we are confident that the court will conclude that it represents a repudiation, by Congress, of the substantive centerpiece of the Bulletin.

We hope, however, that no industry participant ever itself in a situation in which it becomes necessary to assert this argument in the context of a CFPB enforcement action.  As we suggested previously, if the Bulletin is invalid, and the CFPB cannot reissue a disapproved rule in “substantially the same form” or issue “a new rule that is substantially the same,” turning around and applying the substantive centerpiece of the disapproved rule in supervision and enforcement would disregard the clear import of an act of Congress.  And it would lead to the most absurd of results – that the CFPB would be forbidden from adopting the “rule” set forth in the Bulletin, but would be free to enforce that “rule” in enforcement actions against industry participants.  We think any federal court would find it impossible to swallow this contradiction.  But, as noted above, our hope is that an administrative agency that respects its role in a representative democracy should not behave in a manner that reflects a desire to nullify the clear import of a Congressional resolution disapproving the disparate impact centerpiece of the Bulletin.

Finally, in his Credit Slips Blog post, Prof. Levitin asserted that our reference to “grandiose and vague ‘will of the People’ language . . . is a glaring sign that there’s not a good substantive argument” and that we were “falling back” on a legislative intent argument.  In this regard, he asserts that we incorrectly assume that a CRA resolution is an affirmative statement of policy and seeks to draw a distinction between an affirmative law requiring 60 votes in the Senate and negative law adopted pursuant to the CRA.

Simply stated, we think it illogical to suggest that a statement of policy can be disapproved without thereby disapproving the substance of the policy that is the subject of the statement.  The purported distinction, based upon Senate filibuster rules, between an affirmative law and a negative law strikes us as curious indeed.  At the end of the day, a Public Law is, in fact, a law and the only relevant question is, “what is its import?”  In written testimony submitted to the House Financial Services Committee on July 12, 2015, Prof. Levitin himself observed that a trio of provisions of a proposed Financial CHOICE Act, including one that “would nullify the CFPB’s indirect auto lending guidance and impose an onerous process for any future guidance,” would “shield discriminatory lenders from legal repercussions.”

Additionally, our perspective strikes us entirely consistent with the policy underlying the CRA, which was to give Congress a veto power over administrative rulemaking that can be, and often is, substantive in nature.  It seems to us that the perspective articulated by Prof. Levtin leads to a result that leaves an administrative agency whose rule has been disapproved to continue to cling to (and apply) the substance of its disapproved rule in supervision and enforcement.  We respectfully submit that the view articulated by Prof. Levitin would have the effect of defeating the central purpose of the CRA.

In sum, although we have enjoyed the engaging “back and forth” with our friend Adam Levitin, it appears that we will have to agree to respectfully disagree.  What remains to be seen is whether the academic discussion in which we have been partaking ever becomes something with more practical impact.  That will, of course, depend on the CFPB’s future action.

This week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a press release directing the New York Department of State to issue a new regulation impacting consumer reporting agencies.  The new regulation was adopted on an emergency basis and went into immediate effect in order to protect consumers from identity theft and other potential economic harms that may arise following a data breach.

The regulation requires consumer reporting agencies to:

  • Identify dedicated points of contact for the Division of Consumer Protection to obtain information to assist New York consumers in the event of a data breach;
  • Respond within 10 days to information requests made on behalf of consumers by the Division of Consumer Protection;
  • File a form with certain information to the Division of Consumer Protection, including all fees associated with the purchase or use of products and services marketed as identity theft protection products as well as a listing and description of all business affiliations and contractual relationships with any other entities relating to the provision of any identity theft prevention or mitigation products or services; and
  • In any advertisements or other promotional materials, disclose any and all fees associated with the purchase or use of proprietary products offered to consumers for the prevention of identity theft, including, if offered on a trial basis, any and all fees charged for its purchase or use after the trial period and the requisites of cancellation of such continued use.

The protections appear targeted to address alleged abuses by the consumer reporting industry following the recent Equifax data breach.  Cuomo also announced that the Division of Consumer Protection will be issuing a demand letter to Equifax for information to assess the damage and risk of identity theft to New York State consumers resulting from the data breach.

Cuomo did not address the status of previously announced proposed regulations of the consumer credit reporting agencies by the New York Department of Financial Services.

As we reported recently, the Government Accountability Office has determined that CFPB Bulletin 2013-02 on dealer pricing in indirect auto finance (“Dealer Pricing Bulletin” or “Bulletin”) is a “rule” subject to review under the Congressional Review Act (“CRA”).  We noted that, if Congress chose to disapprove the guidance, it would severely undermine the basis for any future enforcement or supervisory action based on the legal and factual theories set forth in the Bulletin.

Our friend Professor Adam Levitin at Georgetown Law Center sent one of us the following message on Twitter a few days ago, questioning whether such an override would have any impact at all:

@AlanKaplinsky Trying to puzzle through this.  It’s pretty weird. GAO’s determined that the IAL [indirect auto lending] guidance is subject to CRA. But as far as I can tell, the GAO decision has no force of law, and I don’t see how it could, as the CRA says it’s not subject to judicial review.  If it isn’t actually a “rule,” then a CRA disapproval resolution would have no effect.  But there’s no judicial review allowed to determine this.  And even if it is a rule, what would it mean to void non-binding guidance?  It doesn’t void or change the CFPB’s position or undercut any ECOA or UDAAP suit the CFPB might bring.  All it does it void the guidance communicating the CFPB’s position.  IAC, does it really matter?  Perhaps the CFPB will stop enforcement actions for a while, but the IAL consent decrees presumably have forward looking provisions, and there’s also state AG enforcement risk.  I can’t imagine compliance at most IALs letting them revert to old form.  And given the 5-year SOL on ECOA, even if a Trump confirmed CFPB Director had no interest in bringing ECOA actions, any reversion to old behavior will quickly become chargeable by the AG in the next administration or the CFPB Director after a Trump-confirmed one.  It’s possible that that AG and CFPB Director won’t be interested in pursuing ECOA actions, but if they are, a[n] IAL that reverted to allowing unpoliced markups would be in a most uncomfortable position.  A lot of risk for a few years of allowing unpoliced markups. (emphasis added).

There is much that can (and ultimately may) be said in response to each of these assertions, but given the likelihood of a joint resolution of disapproval being introduced shortly, we wanted to focus today on the suggestion that the enactment of a disapproval measure would be inconsequential.  More specifically, we wanted to take the opportunity to explain why, as suggested in our blog post, we believe an override of the Dealer Pricing Bulletin should put a permanent end to this theory of assignee liability for so-called dealer “markup” disparities and make it impossible for the CFPB to pursue supervisory or enforcement actions based upon it.

Let’s begin by remembering that the legal and factual theories on which the CFPB’s indirect auto fair lending cases were based are very shaky, to say the least.  We wrote a blog post about this a couple of years ago, but just to refresh your recollection:

  • There is a significant question, especially after Inclusive Communities, about whether disparate impact claims are cognizable under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in the first place (see “The ECOA Discrimination and Disparate Impact – Interpreting the Meaning of the Words that Actually Are There,” 61 Business Lawyer 829 (2006));
  • The Supreme Court decision in Dukes v. Wal-Mart stands for the proposition that a policy of “allowing discretion” is not a specific, identifiable policy subject to disparate impact analysis (see “Auto Finance and Disparate Impact: Substantive Lessons Learned from Class Certification Decisions”);
  • The Regulation B multiple creditor liability rule (12 C.F.R. § 1002.2(l)) provides that an assignee (i.e., an “indirect auto finance company” in the parlance of the Bureau) is not liable for an ECOA violation by the original creditor unless the assignee knew or had reasonable notice of the act, policy or practice constituting the violation before becoming involved in the credit transaction – meaning in our view that the government should need to prove that the assignee knew or had reasonable notice of disparate treatment by a dealership prior to purchasing a retail installment sale contract (“RISC”);
  • The legal theory on which the discrimination claim ultimately is based – that discretionary pricing by dealerships has a discriminatory effect due to disparate treatment by dealerships – would require a dealer-level analysis rather than a portfolio-wide one;
  • The use of a portfolio-wide analysis manufactures statistical evidence of discrimination that does not exist by aggregating the RISCs of different dealerships to the assignee level, thereby comparing different auto dealers to one another; and
  • The use of a continuous-regression model over BISG proxy results creates the appearance of disparities when none exist, and inflates any that may exist.

In subsequent blogs posts, we discussed reports prepared by the House Financial Services Committee Majority Staff titled “Unsafe at Any Bureaucracy: CFPB Junk Science and Indirect Auto Lending” and “Unsafe at Any Bureaucracy, Part III: The CFPB’s Vitiated Legal Case Against Auto Lenders.”  We also reported previously on the AFSA study titled “Fair Lending: Implications for the Indirect Auto Finance Market,”an Executive Summary of which is available here.  In short, the subject of alleged assignee liability for asserted dealer “mark-up” disparities has been highly controversial and a lightning rod for Congressional, media and industry criticism of the Bureau.

Now let’s assume for the moment that Congress enacts a joint resolution disapproving the Dealer Pricing Bulletin articulating the Bureau’s theories of assignee liability for so-called dealer “markup” disparities, and the President of the United States signs it into law.  In that event, we believe that it should become impossible for a federal governmental agency to pursue the theory of liability in enforcement and, therefore, anywhere else.  We further believe that such a Congressional override would cause the federal judiciary to be even more hostile to the CFPB’s theory of liability than Supreme Court decisions like Wal-Mart and Inclusive Communities would require.  Here’s why.

The salient question is, “what would be the import of the enactment of a joint resolution of disapproval?”  A Congressional override of the guidance would not represent, as Professor Levitin suggests, merely a disapproval of the agency’s statement of its position.  It is, rather, a disapproval of the position itself pursuant to a law enacted by the democratically-elected representatives of the People of the United States declaring that “such rule shall have no force and effect.”  The “position” is embodied in the “statement” and cannot be disassociated from it; they are indivisible.

The end result of the legislative process thus would be a Public Law effectively branding this theory of liability as, in the parlance of Inclusive Communities, a disparate impact claim that is “abusive” of sales finance companies and banks engaged in the automobile sales finance business.  (Inclusive Communities emphasized the importance of safeguards against disparate impact claims that are abusive of defendants, such as the requirement to identify a specific policy or practice of the defendant causing asserted statistical disparities, and directed district courts to enforce this “robust causality requirement” promptly by “examin[ing] with care whether a plaintiff has made out a prima facie case of disparate impact” by “alleg[ing] facts at the pleading stage or produc[ing] evidencing demonstrat[ing] a causal connection” between the alleged policy and the disparity.)

Pursuant to the CRA, the enactment of a disapproval measure would preclude the CFPB from subsequently reissuing the rule or adopting a new rule that is substantially the same as the disapproved rule unless “the reissued or new rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of the joint resolution disapproving the original rule.”

If the CFPB’s “rule,” as expressed in its Dealer Pricing Bulletin, is invalid, and the CFPB cannot issue a similar rule in the future, how can it possibly turn around and apply the disapproved “rule” in supervision and enforcement?  We don’t believe it can because doing so would disregard the clear import of an act of Congress.  Rather, we are confident that a Court would conclude that the Congressional override is an expression of disapproval of the legal and factual theories of liability expressed in the Bulletin.

By Professor Levitin’s logic, even though Congress nullified the CFPB arbitration agreements rule, the CFPB would be free to commence UDAAP enforcement actions or administrative proceedings against companies simply for using arbitration agreements with class action waivers, even though the rule prohibiting them was invalidated.  We think this result not only would defy the Canon of Common Sense, but it also would fail to give effect to the will of the People as reflected in an act of Congress that was approved by the President of the United States.

In Professor’s Levitin’s formulation, an administrative agency can continue to apply, in the enforcement (and apparently in the supervisory) contexts, the substance of a “rule” that has been disapproved by an act of Congress.  We respectfully disagree.  This being a representative Democracy in which the government is subordinated to the will of the People as expressed in laws enacted by their elected representatives, we think it makes common sense to answer the salient question in the manner we suggest, rather than in a manner that leaves an agency free to do as it pleases, insulated from the clear import of what Congress (and derivatively the People) have instructed by enacting a disapproval measure into law.  We thus urge Congress to disapprove CFPB Bulletin 2013-02, because we believe that congressional disapproval should have a permanent preclusive effect on the ability of federal regulators to pursue this deeply flawed theory of liability.

We do not appear to be alone in this view.  Professor Levitin himself, in testimony submitted to the House Financial Services Committee in 2015, noted that a provision of the Financial CHOICE Act that would repeal the Dealer Pricing Bulletin would “shield discriminatory lenders from legal repercussions.”  Although we would eliminate the word “discriminatory” from that sentence, we believe that a CRA override of the Dealer Pricing Bulletin would have that effect.  Suggesting that the CFPB could pursue these cases against “indirect auto lenders” after a Congressional override of the Bulletin strikes us as wishful thinking.

Congress may have now have the opportunity to disapprove by a simple majority vote the CFPB’s disparate impact theory of assignee liability for so-called dealer “markup” disparities as a result of a determination by the General Accountability Office (GAO) that the CFPB’s Bulletin describing its legal theory is a “rule” subject to override under the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

We previously blogged about press reports that the GAO had accepted a request from Senator Patrick Toomey to determine whether CFPB Bulletin 2013-02, titled “Indirect Auto Lending and Compliance with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act” (the “Bulletin”), is a “rule” within the scope of the CRA.  (“Indirect auto lenders” is the term used by the Bureau to refer to persons, such as banks and sales finance companies, that are engaged in the business of accepting assignments of automobile retail installment sale contracts from dealerships.)  We subsequently suggested that a recent GAO determination that the interagency leveraged lending guidance is a “rule” subject to the CRA foreshadowed a similar determination for the CFPB indirect auto finance guidance reflected in the Bulletin.

As it turns out, we were right.  The GAO issued its decision on December 5, 2017, concluding that the Bulletin is a “rule” subject to the CRA because “it is a general statement of policy designed to assist indirect auto lenders to ensure they are operating in compliance with [the] ECOA and Regulation B, as applied to dealer markup and compensation policies.”

The Bulletin is an official guidance document issued by the Bureau on March 21, 2013.  It effectively previewed the Bureau’s subsequent ECOA enforcement actions against assignees of automobile retail installment sale contracts (RISCs), setting forth the views of the CFPB concerning what it characterized as a significant ECOA compliance risk associated with an asserted assignee “policy” of “allowing” dealerships to negotiate the annual percentage rate under a retail installment sale contract by “marking up” the wholesale buy rate established by a prospective assignee.  The Bulletin’s intent to establish its enforcement and supervisory approach with respect to the subject practice was unmistakably clear not only from its text but also from the tag line in the accompanying press release – “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to Hold Auto Lenders Accountable for Illegal Discriminatory Markup.”

Before responding to Senator’s Toomey’s request, in accordance with its standard procedure for responding to requests of this nature, the GAO solicited and obtained the CFPB’s views.  The Bureau responded to the GAO by letter dated July 7, 2017.

The legal analysis reflected in the GAO opinion is straightforward.  Subject to exceptions not relevant, the CRA adopts the Administrative Procedure Act definition of a “rule,” which states, in relevant part, that a rule is “”the whole or a part of an agency statement of general . . . applicability and future effect designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law or policy . . ..”  The GAO framed the question presented as “whether a nonbinding general statement of policy, which provides guidance on how [the] CFPB will exercise its discretionary enforcement powers, is a rule under [the] CRA.”  It agreed with the CFPB’s assertion that the Bulletin “is a non-binding guidance document” that “identifies potential risk areas and provides general suggestions for compliance” with the ECOA.

The GAO rejected, however, the CFPB’s argument that the CRA does not apply to the Bulletin because the Bulletin has no legal effect on regulated entities.  Specifically, the Bureau had argued “taken as a whole the CRA can logically apply only to agency documents that have [binding] legal effect.”  The GAO concluded that “CRA requirements apply to general statements of policy, which, by definition, are not legally binding.”

The GAO letter explains that, “to strengthen congressional oversight of agency rulemaking,” the CRA requires all federal agencies, including independent regulatory agencies, to submit a report on each new rule to both Houses of Congress and to the Comptroller General before it can take effect.” (emphasis added)  The CFPB acknowledged that it had not complied with this formal reporting requirement because it did not believe the Bulletin was a “rule” subject to the CRA reporting requirement.  In response to the GAO decision, Senator Toomey issued a press release stating that “I intend to do everything in my power to repeal this ill-conceived rule using the Congressional Review Act.”

As explained in prior blog posts, the CRA establishes a streamlined procedure pursuant to which Congress may enact, by simple majority vote, a joint resolution disapproving a “rule.”  A joint resolution of disapproval passed by Congress is presented to the President for executive action.  If approved by the President, the joint resolution is enacted into law and assigned a Public Law number.  If a joint resolution of disapproval is enacted into law, the disapproved rule “may not be reissued in substantially the same form, and a new rule that is substantially the same as such a rule may not be issued, unless the reissued or new rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of the joint resolution disapproving the original rule.”  Thus, the enactment of a joint resolution of disapproval has a preclusive effect on future regulatory action.

According to a Congressional Research Service report, in prior instances where the GAO determined that the agency action satisfied the CRA definition of a “rule” and joint resolutions of disapproval were subsequently introduced, “the Senate has considered the publication in the Congressional Record of the official GAO opinions . . . as the trigger date for the initiation period to submit a disapproval resolution and for the action period during which such a resolution qualifies for expedited consideration in the Senate.”  If a joint resolution of disapproval is introduced, it therefore would appear that the CRA clock may start to run for expedited consideration by the Senate once the GAO opinion is published in the Congressional Record.

So, what does all of this mean for the automobile sales finance industry?  We think there are several important implications.  First, the GAO’s decision strengthens the argument that the CFPB’s effort to regulate dealer pricing of RISCs should have been pursued through a rulemaking proceeding, rather than through “guidance” and enforcement actions.

Second, the GAO determination means that Congress could override the Bulletin by means of a joint resolution of disapproval, with a majority vote that could not be avoided by a Senate filibuster.  Given the Republican opposition to the CFPB’s pursuit of this issue, and the Democratic support for auto dealers as well (expressed in letters from members of Congress to the CFPB), there seems to be a fair chance of a CRA disapproval resolution passing.  Indeed, as Senator Toomey noted in his press release, the House of Representatives passed the Reforming CFPB Indirect Auto Financing Guidance Act in November 2015 by a bipartisan vote of 332-96.

What would the enactment of a joint resolution of disapproval mean?  Obviously, it would mean the Bulletin would be null and void.  But since the Bulletin was non-binding anyway and the CFPB did not comply with the CRA reporting requirement, what difference would it make?

Opponents of the CFPB’s disparate impact theory of liability would argue that the override of the guidance is, by definition, a Congressional repudiation of its content – the legal and factual theories of liability contained in the Bulletin. The corollary of this compelling argument is that the override would preclude not only another similar “rule,” but also that which is inherent in the existence of such a “rule” – its application to regulated entities in supervisory activities or enforcement actions. This repudiation would be permanent (unless altered by a subsequent Congressional enactment), and might therefore offer a lasting end to the CFPB’s efforts to regulate dealer pricing through banks and sales finance companies, rather than the potentially temporary hiatus that could be brought about by new leadership at the CFPB.

We hope that Congress will override the Bulletin under the CRA, and possibly put a final end to this highly questionable legal and factual ECOA theory.

The Department of Justice has filed an amicus brief in a case pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that presents the question of whether the prohibition on employment discrimination on the basis of sex in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act includes discrimination based on sexual orientation.  In the brief, the DOJ argues that based on Title VII’s plain text and precedent, the prohibition does not encompass sexual orientation discrimination “as a matter of law” and observes that “whether it should do so as matter of policy remains a question for Congress to decide.”

Since at least 2015, the CFPB has signaled that discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation might be a focus of fair lending supervision and enforcement.  In a 2016 letter to the organization SAGE (Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders), Director Cordray described how, in the CFPB’s view, current law provided strong support for the position that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act’s prohibition against discrimination on the basis of “sex” includes discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.  More specifically, Director Cordray referenced Title VII cases and noted that Title VII precedents traditionally guide judicial interpretation of ECOA and Regulation B.

He also discussed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission decisions involving alleged employment-related discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in which “the EEOC has laid out its reasoning about how discrimination on these bases necessarily involves sex-based considerations.”  He deemed the EEOC’s views of what constitutes sex-based discrimination under Title VII “highly relevant to the similar statutory analysis of what it means to discriminate based on ‘sex’ under ECOA.”

The DOJ’s position in the amicus brief is clearly at odds with Director Cordray’s attempt to use Title VII cases to support the CFPB’s position on the scope of the ECOA’s prohibition against discrimination based on sex. The brief also suggests that once the CFPB is under the leadership of a Director appointed by President Trump, it may retreat from any efforts to extend ECOA protections to sexual orientation.  A similar retreat by the EEOC could occur once the majority of EEOC commissioners are Republican appointees.  (Although the EEOC’s Acting Chair was appointed by President Trump, a majority of EEOC commissioners are Democratic appointees. In the Second Circuit case, the EEOC filed an amicus brief on behalf of the employee.  In its amicus brief, the DOJ observed that the “EEOC is not speaking for the United States and its position about the scope of Title VII is entitled to no deference beyond its powers to persuade.”)

Regardless of the CFPB’s position, companies should be mindful of the fact that numerous state laws already prohibit discrimination in credit transactions on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.  As a result, companies should continue to consider revising their policies, procedures and fair lending analyses to incorporate discrimination based on sexual orientation.