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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.

 

Earlier this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memorandum in which he prohibited DOJ attorneys from entering into settlement agreements on behalf of the United States that require a payment or loan to any non-governmental person or entity that is not a party to the dispute.  The AG’s press release explained that the directive was intended to end the use of settlement funds to “to bankroll third party special interest groups or the political friends of whoever is in power.”

Last week, Senator Charles E. Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the AG in which he asked Mr. Sessions to explain whether any payments made by settling defendants to non-governmental third parties during the Obama Administration at the DOJ’s direction “could lawfully be rescinded and re-directed back into the General Fund of the U.S. Treasury.”  Mr. Grassley also asked Mr. Sessions to explain when the DOJ will begin to seek the rescission or re-direction of settlement payments “[i]f such a procedure is consistent with law and the Department’s authority.”

Mr. Grassley’s letter includes a request for a “complete list of all settlement agreements reached during the Obama administration that involved payments to non-governmental third parties” and related information for each of the settlements, including a full accounting of what payments have been made to non-governmental third parties to date.

 

 

We previously reported on the Executive Order 13772 titled “Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System,” which is a high-level policy statement consisting of a series of Core Principles that are designed to inform the manner in which the Administration regulates the financial system.  The Executive Order directs the Secretary of the Treasury to identify, in a report to the President, any laws, regulations, guidance and other Government policies “that inhibit Federal regulation of the United States financial system in a manner consistent with the Core Principles.”

The American Bankers Association (“ABA”) has submitted a white paper that identifies areas of concern with respect to various fair lending topics.  In this white paper, the ABA “offers its views” in relation to the directive that the Secretary has received pursuant to the Executive Order:

  • Under the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”), federal agencies should apply the disparate impact theory of liability consistent with the framework outlined by the Supreme Court in Inclusive Communities.
  • Disparate impact claims are not cognizable under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
  • Redlining should be assessed consistent with the Community Reinvestment Act (“CRA”), and purchased loans should be recognized as promoting access to credit.
  • The focus of the CFPB should remain on consumers, not business.

Inclusive Communities Framework: The ABA comment concerning FHA disparate impact claims arises from industry concerns that federal agencies have largely disregarded the safeguards against abusive disparate impact claims that were a centerpiece of the Supreme Court decision in Inclusive Communities.  In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision in Inclusive Communities, the ABA sent a letter to the federal bank regulatory agencies, the CFPB, HUD and the DOJ requesting confirmation “in interagency guidance, updated exam procedures, and where appropriate amended regulations that the Agencies’ consideration of disparate impact claims in both the supervisory and enforcement context will be governed by standards consistent with the . . . framework in” Inclusive Communities.

The white paper asserts, however, that “[t]here has been nothing” of the sort by these agencies in response to Inclusive Communities and that “examples where a federal agency has taken action to apply the Court’s framework for consideration of disparate impact are hard to find.”  After observing that some defendants have succeeded in fair lending litigation by asserting the [Inclusive Communities] safeguards against abusive disparate impact claims, the ABA notes that “[a] win in court comes after much time and expense and public reputational damage.”  The concern expressed therefore is that “the menace of supervisory assertion of disparate impact claims without appropriate controls can exalt leverage over law.”

Rejection of ECOA Disparate Impact Claims: The comment regarding the ECOA is premised on the rationale of the Supreme Court decision in Inclusive Communities, which highlighted key differences between the FHA and the ECOA that support the view that disparate impact claims are not cognizable under the ECOA.  It thus is consistent with observations expressed in our article regarding the Supreme Court decision, as well as those expressed more recently in the Majority Staff Report of the House Financial Services Committee titled “Unsafe at Any Bureaucracy, Part III: The CFPB’s Vitiated Legal Case Against Auto Lenders.”  This issue is discussed in greater detail in a Business Lawyer article titled “The ECOA Discrimination Proscription and Disparate Impact– Interpreting the Meaning of the Words That Actually Are There,” 61 Bus. Law. 829 (2006).  The recommendations of the ABA include a request that “[t]he Agencies should acknowledge in writing that disparate impact claims are not recognized under the ECOA.”

Redlining and Purchased Loans: The CRA-related comments concerning redlining and purchased loans are premised on the ABA’s assertion that agencies have “invent[ed] redlining [claims] by ignoring intent, CRA performance or purchased loans.”  Significantly, the ABA notes that, “[i]n recent enforcement actions, Agencies have disregarded a bank’s CRA assessment area” and, instead “have overlaid their own creation, a ‘reasonably expected market area’ (REMA) or a ‘Proper Assessment Area’ – an area Agencies assert that the bank should serve.”  The redlining case against Klein Bank would be an example of this phenomenon.  The ABA asserts that this approach has resulted in “the curious anomaly of banks that received high CRA marks over an extended period of time facing regulatory assertions of redlining.”  Finally, the white paper notes that “in some enforcement actions Agencies have been unwilling to consider purchased loans, despite the fact that under CRA banks are encouraged to purchase loans.”

CFPB Focus: The comment that the focus of the Bureau should remain on consumer credit culminates in the following specific recommendations: (i) repeal of Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act relating to the collection and reporting of data concerning lending to “women-owned, minority-owned and small business”; (ii) reassigning the implementation of Section 1071 to the Small Business Administration as an interim measure; and (iii) eliminating “any vestige of Bureau regulatory, supervisory, or enforcement authority over commercial credit or other commercial account and financial services” by means of a series of specific amendments to the Dodd-Frank Act.  (The Financial CHOICE Act bill passed by the House of Representatives last week includes a repeal of Section 1071.)

Late yesterday the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued the first in a series of reports to the President pursuant to Executive Order 13772 regarding “Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System.”  We will be reviewing this report, and the subsequent reports that the Treasury Department press release indicates will be issued “over the coming months.”

Republican members of the House Financial Services Committee recently released a report, prepared by the Republican Staff of the Committee, titled “Unsafe at Any Bureaucracy, Part III: The CFPB’s Vitiated Legal Case Against Auto Lenders.”  This is the third Republican Staff report examining the automotive ECOA enforcement actions of the CFPB with respect to what its characterizes as a “dealer markup” of the wholesale buy rate established by the assignee of a retail installment sale contract (“RISC”).  We previously wrote about the first investigative report in this series, which was titled “Unsafe at Any Bureaucracy: CFPB Junk Science and Indirect Auto Lending.”  The latest report discusses two subjects.

The “Vitiated Legal Case”

The third report is devoted principally to “demonstrat[ing] that under” the Supreme Court decision in Inclusive Communities, “if the CFPB were to rely upon the legal theory it deployed in previous enforcement actions against auto financiers, its claims would not survive judicial scrutiny.”  As a threshold matter, the report asserts that disparate impact claims are not cognizable under the ECOA because the ECOA does not contain “results-oriented language” like that which the Supreme Court relied upon in holding that disparate impact claims are cognizable under the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”).   The ECOA speaks instead in terms of discriminating against an applicant on a prohibited basis.  The report further asserts that Inclusive Communities interpreted the adoption of the FHA Amendments of 1988, which it said contemplated the existence of disparate impact liability, as Congressional ratification of prior appellate decisions holding that disparate impact claims are cognizable under the FHA.  By way of contrast, however, the report notes that “Congress has made no such amendments to ECOA.”

The staff report also asserts, and contains a robust discussion of, additional reasons why the Bureau could not establish a prima facie case of disparate impact liability against an assignee of RISCs.  Specifically, for reasons discussed therein, the report concludes that: (i) the asserted “discretion” to “mark up” the wholesale buy rate is not a specific “policy” upon which a disparate impact claim may be based; and (ii) the CFPB could not meet the robust causality standard that Inclusive Communities reiterated and expounded upon in its discussion of the safeguards against abusive disparate impact claims.  Finally, the report suggests that, “[b]y asking only whether a minority [buyer] paid more than the non-Hispanic white average, the CFPB does not accurately assess whether he or she was actually harmed by the disparate impact.”

The report’s discussion of the “vitiated legal case” against assignees of RISCs concludes with the observations that “[f]uzzy logic and false comparisons are unfortunately prevalent in the” Bureau’s ECOA auto enforcement actions, as is a “lack of rigor that leads to unsupported and unreliable conclusions.”  We have written previously about some of the issues discussed in the report, including in our articles on the Supreme Court decision in Inclusive Communities, “Auto Finance and Disparate Impact: Substantive Lessons Learned from Class Certification Decisions,” and a February 2006 Business Lawyer article titled “The ECOA Discrimination Proscription and Disparate Impact – Interpreting the Meaning of the Words That Actually Are There.”

The Auto Finance Larger Participant Rule

The press release issued by the Republican members of the Committee highlights the final subject covered by the report.   Titled “CFPB Director Failed to Heed Attorney Advice on Auto Lending Rule, Likely Violated Federal Law,” the press release asserts that the Bureau may have violated the Administrative Procedures Act in adopting the larger participant rule for the automobile financing market (the “LPR”).  Quoting from the Supplementary Information accompanying the proposed LPR, the report states that the definition of a “larger participant” is “based upon ‘quantitative information on the number of market participants and their number and dollar volume of annual originations’ taken from Experian’s AutoCount database.”

According to the report, during the comment period for the proposed LPR, the Bureau received requests for a list of the companies that it believed would qualify as “larger participants” under the proposed rule, and “‘a number of comments pertaining directly or indirectly to the Experian list.’” Believing the Experian AutoCount data, and any information derived from it, to be proprietary information that it was not at liberty to disclose, the Bureau did not respond with the requested information.

The report indicates, however, that after the comment period ended, Experian informed the Bureau that it had no objection to: (i) releasing the list of the names of the entities that the Bureau estimated would be “larger participants” under the proposed volume threshold for larger participant status; and (ii) the relative market share for each listed entity.  Relying upon internal CFPB documents obtained by the Committee, the report asserts that the Bureau did not follow an internal legal recommendation to reopen the comment period, publish this information and request comments with respect to it before proceeding to adopt a final LPR for the automobile financing market.

The D.C. district court recently granted two industry trade associations whose members sell homeowners insurance leave to file an amended complaint in their lawsuit challenging the Fair Housing Act (FHA) disparate impact rule (Rule) adopted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  In their amended complaint, the trade associations allege that the Rule is inconsistent with the U.S. Supreme Court decision last June in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc.  Should the district court reach the merits of the trade associations’ claims, its decision could provide helpful precedent for creditors in challenges to the CFPB’s or DOJ’s use of a disparate impact theory of liability under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA).

The trade associations originally filed their complaint in American Insurance Association and National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies v. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in June 2013.  The original complaint alleged that, in promulgating the Rule, HUD exceeded its authority under the Administrative Procedure Act because the FHA prohibited only disparate treatment.  Agreeing with the trade associations, the district court issued a decision in November 2014 vacating the Rule.  HUD appealed the decision and the D.C. Circuit, at the request of HUD, agreed to hold the case in abeyance pending the Supreme Court decision in Inclusive Communities.  The D.C. Circuit subsequently granted the trade associations’ motion requesting that the District Court decision be vacated and the case be remanded for consideration in light of Inclusive Communities.  Notwithstanding HUD’s opposition, the district court granted the trade associations’ motion to amend.

In Inclusive Communities, the Supreme Court held that disparate impact claims are cognizable under the FHA but discussed at length limitations on disparate impact liability that “are necessary to protect potential defendants against abusive disparate impact claims.”  In their amended complaint, the trade associations allege that these limitations provide four grounds for vacating the Rule as unlawful under Inclusive Communities to the extent it applies to the underwriting and ratemaking decisions of insurers.  As described in more detail in our legal alert, these grounds include the Supreme Court’s admonition that, without adequate causality safeguards at the prima facie stage, disparate impact liability “might cause race to be used and considered in a pervasive way;” the Court’s emphatic statement that the “robust causality requirement” is necessary to ensure 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;” and the Court’s statements that disparate impact liability does not mandate the displacement of valid governmental or private policies, only the removal of “artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers.”

Given that non-mortgage creditors, like insurers, do not collect data on an applicant’s race, a district court ruling that addresses when disparate impact liability would be deemed to inject race pervasively into otherwise “race blind” underwriting and pricing practices could have positive implications for non-mortgage creditors facing ECOA disparate impact claims.  A district court ruling elaborating upon the robust causality requirement also could assist creditors in defending against ECOA claims.

Additionally, a finding by the district court that the Rule’s burden shifting framework impermissibly allows plaintiffs to second guess which of two reasonable approaches a defendant should follow could similarly be helpful precedent in ECOA cases.  Such a finding would also serve as a rebuttal to comments about Inclusive Communities made last October by Patrice Ficklin, Director of the CFPB Office of Fair Lending, at the American Bar Association’s Consumer Financial Services Institute.  In response to a question from my colleague Mark Furletti, Ms. Ficklin stated that, while some had interpreted language in Inclusive Communities to be helpful to defendants with respect to the burden shifting that takes place under a disparate impact analysis, any such language was mere “dicta” and the decision did not lighten or change a defendant’s burden.

We will continue to follow the case, with the next significant development likely to be HUD’s decision whether to answer or move to dismiss the amended complaint.