On September 5, 2018, a coalition of 14 state attorneys general, led by North Carolina’s attorney general, Josh Stein, wrote to Acting BCFP Director Mick Mulvaney to express “grave concerns” that the BCFP may seek to abandon the federal government’s longstanding position that ECOA provides for disparate impact liability. A copy of the letter can be found here.
The letter appears to have been inspired by at least two relatively recent developments – the revocation of the then-CFPB’s March 2013 Indirect Auto Lending Bulletin and Acting Director Mulvaney’s public comments stating that the Bureau will be “reexamining” the requirements of ECOA. The letter emphasized that the disparate impact theory has been critical to the effective enforcement of federal and state antidiscrimination laws and warned that the Attorneys General “will not hesitate to uphold the law” if the BCFP concludes that disparate impact is not available under ECOA.
At this point, it remains to be seen whether and how the BCFP will “reexamine” ECOA. The most likely approach would be for the Bureau to propose amendments to Regulation B that would remove the rule’s current language allowing for disparate impact liability. This would likely prompt strong condemnation from the 14 Attorneys General who signed the letter (among others), and possibly litigation over whether the BCFP has the authority to gut disparate impact under ECOA given that the Supreme Court held in 2015 that the theory was viable under similar language in the Fair Housing Act.