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The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Henderson v. Source For Pub. Data, L.P., No. 21-1678, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 30534 (4th Cir. Nov. 3, 2022) found that the protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act did not extend to a public data aggregation company.  The ruling reversed the district court’s order dismissing all claims in a putative class action alleging Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) violations against the data aggregator, PublicData.com… Continue Reading

Recently, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced the approval of two new credit scoring models, the FICO 10T and the VantageScore 4.0 for use by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs or Enterprises). Lenders will have a few years to implement use of the new models before being expected to report both scores on loans sold to the GSEs.… Continue Reading

The CFPB recently issued an advisory opinion to consumer reporting companies about their obligation to prevent obviously false “junk data” from appearing on consumers’ credit reports.  The opinion states that companies must take steps to reliably detect and remove logically inconsistent data from consumers’ credit reports such as information that is obviously impossible.… Continue Reading

The Eighth Circuit reiterated in a decision last month that trial courts must distinguish between FCRA plaintiffs who have suffered concrete harm and plaintiffs who merely seek to collect statutorily allowed damages as a way to ensure compliance with the law.  Under the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo, the former have Article III standing to assert FCRA claims but the latter do not.… Continue Reading

In a rare development, a California state court of appeals has opined on the requirements for obtaining authorization for background checks pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

In Hebert v. Barnes & Noble, Inc., the plaintiff filed a putative class action against retailer Barnes & Noble, contending it willfully violated the FCRA by providing job applicants with a disclosure that included extraneous language unrelated to the topic of consumer reports. … Continue Reading

To implement recent amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has proposed a rule intended to assist survivors of trafficking. The rule would establish a way for survivors to submit documentation to consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) identifying any “adverse item of information” about the consumer resulting from human trafficking, and would prohibit CRAs from furnishing consumer reports containing such information.… Continue Reading

Maryland has enacted legislation that revises the rules of determining creditworthiness.  On May 30, 2021, Maryland Governor Lawrence J. Hogan (R) signed HB1213 into law, which adds to Maryland Code Ann. Financial Institutions (FI) § 1-212.

Effective October 1, 2021, certain financial institutions (banking institutions, credit unions, savings and loan associations, community development financial institutions, and certain credit grantors) must adhere to the rules concerning evaluations of applications under federal law, specifically 12 C.F.R.… Continue Reading

On August 23, 2021, the CFPB filed its sixth status report in the lawsuit alleging wrongful delay by the CFPB in adopting regulations to implement Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to require financial institutions to collect and report certain data in connection with credit applications made by women- or minority-owned businesses and small businesses.… Continue Reading

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has held that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act does not preempt New Jersey’s common-law doctrine of necessaries whereby a spouse is jointly liable for necessary expenses incurred by the other spouse.  As a result, the plaintiff could not rely on preemption as the basis for her claim that the defendant law firm violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by attempting to collect a debt from her that she did not owe for her deceased husband’s medical expenses.… Continue Reading