Fair Lending

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On July 15, 2020, the CPFB filed a complaint in federal court against Townstone Financial, Inc. (Townstone) representing the first ever redlining complaint against a non-bank mortgage lender. The complaint is brought under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA), but not the Fair Housing Act (FHA). (The U.S. Department…

The topics we discuss are: implications of the SCOTUS Seila Law decision on CFPB rules, past consent orders, ongoing enforcement, and the Texas lawsuit challenging the CFPB payday loan rule; DOJ/FTC auto dealer fair lending actions, status of disparate impact, and Google targeted advertising changes; the CFPB’s new advisory opinion program; timing of CFPB debt…

Over the past six weeks, opposition to the OCC’s Community Reinvestment Act (“CRA”) final rule has hardened on two fronts. The OCC’s decision to hurriedly issue the final rule on May 20, 2020 without achieving consensus with the FDIC, the agency with which the OCC had jointly issued the proposed rule, has drawn the ire…

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently issued a statement announcing that it “has worked with Google to improve Google’s online advertising policies to better align them with requirements of the Fair Housing Act, where applicable.”

Last year, HUD issued a “Charge of Discrimination” against Facebook that charged the company “with engaging in…

Earlier this week, in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that firing an employee for being homosexual or transgender constitutes discrimination based on the employee’s sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.  The decision is likely to be relied on by regulators and private plaintiffs alleging…

The CFPB has filed its first status report with the California federal district court as required by the Stipulated Settlement Agreement in the lawsuit filed against the Bureau in May 2019 alleging wrongful delay in adopting regulations to implement Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Section 1071 amended the ECOA to require financial institutions to…

The CFPB’s annual fair lending report covering its 2019 activities is scheduled to be published in tomorrow’s Federal Register.  While most of the report recycles information about which we have previously blogged, it does contain the following noteworthy information:

  • The section of the report on “Innovations in access to credit” includes a subsection about

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After looking at how the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath might inform regulators’ response to the pandemic, we discuss how collections, loss mitigation/hardship programs, and originations of existing products and new programs designed to assist pandemic-impacted consumers (including changes to credit risk/fraud models to address the pandemic’s effects) can create UDAP and fair lending…

In a new blog post, the CFPB highlights fair lending protections available to small businesses that have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly minority and women-owned businesses.

While the blog post emphasizes the CARES Act Paycheck Protection Program, it is intended to address all credit programs available to small businesses.  It contains a…