SoLong wrote: ↑
July 26th, 2025, 08:21
Stack of Turtles wrote: ↑
July 26th, 2025, 05:32
This bill is actually terrible and will result in a flurry of lawsuits by the usual class of carpetbagging lawyers on behalf of brown people who couldn't get loans.
I already condensed the important part into a few sentences, how is that still not enough for some people?
Condensing laws is generally bad because the exact wording matters.
No, you can't use this to sue over a declined loan, unless the loan was declined for political or social risk considerations.
Yes you can. Read it again.
(b) Requirements.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—To provide fair access to financial services, a covered bank (including a subsidiary of a covered bank), except as necessary to comply with another provision of law—
(A) shall make each financial service it offers available to all persons in the geographic market served by the covered bank on proportionally equal terms;
(B) may not deny any person a financial service the covered bank offers unless the denial is justified by such quantified and documented failure of the person to meet quantitative, impartial risk-based standards established in advance by the covered bank;
(C) may not deny, in coordination with or at the request of others, any person a financial service the covered bank offers; and
(D) shall, when denying any person financial services the covered bank offers, provide written justification to the person explaining the basis for the denial, including any specific laws or regulations the covered bank believes are being violated by the person or customer, if any.
The
effectuous wording of this bill makes no reference to political or social risk considerations, but makes it a civil cause of action for any bank to deny financial services (which are defined to include lending!) to anyone at all unless the bank can PROVE, affirmatively, that both 1) the denial is justified by objective, "quantitative [and] impartial" standards, and ALSO 2) that the denial was not "in coordination with or at the request of others", which is categorically banned regardless of justification. nb: credit scores are determined by three federally recognized entities which are not banks, so a judge can easily conclude that any denial based on credit scores — for just one example! — is "in coordination with [...] others", without even having to reach the question of whether they are quantitative and impartial, which would be just as easy to poke holes into.
This is section 8, the section that creates a civil cause of action, or in other words, the only section that actually matters in this bill. Section 5, the section you quoted instead, does
nothing worth mentioning, because all it does is authorize the Comptroller of the Currency to levy a fine of up to $10,000, not exceeding 10% of the value of services impacted,
if he feels like it. That's chump change if it even gets assessed in practice at all. It also only applies to payment card networks or their subsidiaries (banks are not subsidiaries of payment card networks), so, while it's true that the language applies even if Visa indirectly tells your bank (presumably a member institution of the network) that you're not allowed to have a Visa card, that fine can still
only be levied on Visa, not the bank.
Brown people who sue over declined loans do so over racial discrimination, which is already illegal under completely different laws. Go complain about those.
I do complain about those, but I don't want to add even more loopholes for them either.
I'm sorry you don't understand how to read laws.
