InfoBytes Blog
Filter
Subscribe to our InfoBytes Blog weekly newsletter and other publications for news affecting the financial services industry.
CFPB Takes Action Against Law Firm for Alleged FDCPA Violations Concerning Claims of Attorney Involvement in Debt Collection
On April 17, the CFPB announced that it was seeking a permanent injunction and fines against a law firm for allegedly engaging in illegal debt collection practices by making false representations regarding attorney involvement in debt collection calls and in “millions of collection letters sent to consumers.” In a complaint filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, the Bureau claims, among other things, that the firm violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Dodd-Frank by sending “demand letters” and making collection calls to consumers falsely implying that the consumer’s account files had been reviewed by an attorney. The complaint alleges that a majority of the demand letters were created through an automated process and, in most cases, no attorney had reviewed the account file to determine whether sending such a letter was accurate and appropriate. These letters included payment coupons through which consumers made millions of dollars in debt payments to the law firm. The complaint also alleges that a majority of the collection calls made to consumers were handled by non-attorney collectors who conveyed the impression that the matters had been reviewed by attorneys even though no attorney had in fact reviewed the account files. The complaint seeks a permanent injunction prohibiting the firm from committing future violations as well as other legal and equitable relief including restitution to affected consumers, disgorgement of ill-gotten revenue, and civil money penalties.
California Joins 49 States and the District of Columbia in Settlement with Global Money Services Business
On April 12, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced that California has joined a multistate settlement between state attorneys general from 49 states and the District of Columbia and a global money services business to resolve allegations that scammers used the company’s wire transfer services to defraud consumers (see previous InfoBytes post). Under the terms of the settlement, California consumers who made a wire transfer during the period of January 1, 2004 through January 19, 2017, may be eligible for a share of more than $65 million in refunds. As previously covered in InfoBytes, on January 19 of this year, the global money services business entered into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the DOJ and FTC requiring, among other things, the business to pay $586 million in refunds to consumers to settle allegations that the company had failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and aided and abetted wire fraud.
Cordray Discusses Consumer Credit Reporting at Operation HOPE Global Forums Annual Meeting
On April 11, CFPB Director Richard Cordray delivered prepared remarks at the Operation HOPE Global Forums Annual Meeting in Atlanta addressing, among other things, financial challenges facing the “economically vulnerable”—most notably with respect to credit reporting and the handling of consumer disputes. As previously covered in InfoBytes, credit reporting was one of the top three consumer complaint categories for 2016. In his speech, Cordray cited a FTC study that found that “millions of people had an error on at least one of their credit reports that was serious enough to materially affect their credit score” and outlined the Bureau’s position for addressing these concerns such as (i) requiring credit reporting companies to improve quality control systems; (ii) creating easier access for consumer to dispute errors; and (iii) cleaning up information initially provided to the credit reporting companies by examining the ways in which banks and financial companies furnish the information.
PHH Submits Reply Brief in Case Against CFPB; DOJ Allocated 10 Minutes at May 24 Oral Argument
As recently covered by InfoBytes, on March 31 the CFPB and seven amicus curiae respondents each filed briefing in PHH Corp. v CFPB urging the D.C. Circuit to uphold the constitutionality of the Bureau’s single-director, independent-agency structure. On April 10, PHH filed a reply brief responding to the arguments raised by the CFPB and other respondents, and reiterating its position that, among other things, the en banc court should declare that the Dodd-Frank Act’s creation of the CFPB violated constitutional separation of powers requirements and that the only satisfactory remedy is the complete invalidation of the Bureau.
Citing Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), PHH contends that, “the Constitution does not permit Congress to assign any portion of the executive power to an ’independent’ officer who is not accountable to, and removable by, the President.” Id. at 113. Moreover, in addressing comparisons between the CFPB and the FTC, the mortgage lender’s reply argues that “[t]he CFPB’s broad executive, legislative, and adjudicative authority further refutes its claim that it is functionally ‘indistinguishable’ from the FTC in 1935” because, among other reasons, “[i]n 1935, the FTC had no substantive rulemaking powers—the FTC disclaimed that authority until 1962.” In support of this claim, PHH highlights the fact that “the CFPB has all the authority—and more—of a cabinet department such as Treasury or Justice” but “unlike most cabinet positions, the Director may unilaterally appoint every subordinate official in the agency, as well as hire and compensate all CFPB employees outside the normal competitive-service requirements” (emphasis added). In addition to addressing the constitutional issue, PHH’s reply brief also notes that the CFPB has offered no support for its effort to enforce a reinterpretation of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act against the companies.
Oral argument is scheduled for May 24. As provided in a Per Curiam Order issued on April 11, the Court has allocated 30 minutes per side for the argument and an additional ten minutes of argument for the United States as amicus curiae. For additional background, please see our recent PHH Corp. v CFPB Case Update.
Case Update: PHH Corp. v CFPB
March 31 marked the deadline for the CFPB to file its brief in response to PHH Corporation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s en banc review of the CFPB’s enforcement action against PHH for alleged violations of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). As previously covered by InfoBytes, the PHH case began as a challenge to a 2015 penalty the CFPB levied against PHH, which was collected as part of what the CFPB deemed – a “captive reinsurance arrangement.” In fighting the penalty, PHH called into question the Bureau’s constitutionality and in October 2016, a panel of the D.C. Circuit concluded both that the CFPB misinterpreted RESPA, and also that its single-Director structure violated the constitutional separation of powers. On February 16 of this year, however, the D.C. Circuit granted the CFPB’s petition for rehearing en banc of the October 2015 panel decision. In granting en banc review, the court sought guidance from the parties on three specific questions:
- Is the Bureau’s structure unconstitutional because its Director may be removed only for cause, and if so, is the appropriate remedy to sever the for-cause removal provision from the Consumer Financial Protection Act?;
- May the Court avoid addressing the constitutionality of the Bureau’s structure if it adopts the panel’s holdings as to PHH’s liability under RESPA (and should it adopt those holdings)?; and
- What is the appropriate disposition of this case if this Court concludes that the SEC’s administrative law judges are “inferior officers” under Lucia v. SEC?
Oral argument is scheduled for May 24. This Court has allocated 30 minutes per side for the argument and, as discussed further below, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed an unopposed motion seeking ten minutes of argument time for the United States at the May 24 en banc hearing.
CFPB’s Brief. On March 31, the CFPB filed its brief for the en banc rehearing in PHH Corp. v CFPB urging the D.C. Circuit to uphold the constitutionality of the Bureau’s single-director, independent-agency structure. According to the CFPB, neither the Bureau’s current single-director arrangement, nor the “for-cause” restriction on the President’s removal powers prevents the Executive branch from ensuring that the nation’s laws are implemented. Specifically, the brief explains that “[t]he President has no less control over a single-director agency than he does over a multi-member commission.” The brief also sets forth the Bureau’s position that, even “[i]f this Court determines that the Bureau’s structure is unconstitutional,” the appropriate remedy is not to invalidate the agency in its entirety, but rather to “sever the for-cause removal provision” of the Dodd-Frank Act (the Act), thereby allowing the President to remove the Bureau’s director for any reason. In addition to addressing the constitutional question, the CFPB also reiterated its argument that its RESPA interpretation is correct, that PHH and its affiliates violated RESPA, and that the Act’s statute of limitations does not apply to the Bureau’s administrative enforcement authority. And, at the direction of the court, the brief also addressed the potential effect of a decision in Lucia v. SEC that a SEC administrative law judge (ALJ) was an inferior officer under the Constitution. The ALJ used by the CFPB in the PHH enforcement proceeding was, in fact, borrowed from the SEC. Notably, Lucia v. SEC is scheduled to be argued immediately before PHH Corp. v. CFPB, on May 24, 2017.
Amicus Curiae in Support of the CFPB. Also filed on March 31 were seven amicus curiae briefs, each of which offered arguments, both legal and non-legal, in favor of the CFPB’s continued existence as an independent regulator:
- Brief on Rehearing en banc of Amici Curiae State Attorneys General of the States of Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, and the District Of Columbia in Support of Respondent
- Brief on Rehearing en banc of Current and Former Members of Congress as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondent
- Brief on Rehearing en banc of Amici Curiae Public Citizen, Inc., Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, National Association of Consumer Advocates, National Consumer Law Center, and Tzedek DC in Support of Respondent
- Brief of Americans For Financial Reform, California Reinvestment Coalition, Center for Responsible Lending, Consumer Action, Demos, Housing and Equal Rights Advocates, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, National Council of La Raza, National Fair Housing Alliance, Self-Help Credit Union, United States Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, Inc., and Woodstock Institute, as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondent
- Brief on Rehearing en banc of Separation of Powers Scholar as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondent
- Brief on Rehearing en banc of Amici Curiae Financial Regulation Scholars as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondent
- Brief on Rehearing en banc of AARP and AARP Foundation as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondent
PHH’s Brief. Briefing for PHH and amicus curiae briefs in support of the mortgage lender were due on March 17. In its opening brief and addendum, PHH focused on the separation-of-powers and remedy issues, raising the RESPA interpretation issue principally in support of the claim that the CFPB’s unconstitutional structure rendered the Bureau dangerously unaccountable. The New Jersey mortgage lender noted, among other things, that Congress has no ability to cut the agency’s budget and the President cannot remove its director without cause. As a general matter, the mortgage lender has argued that the Bureau’s creation “placed massive, unchecked federal power in the hands of a single, unaccountable director” and that “[t]he director alone rules over large swaths of the field of consumer finance, subject to virtually no restraints from the representative branches.”
DOJ Brief. As previously covered by InfoBytes, the DOJ filed its own brief in the case on March 17, arguing in support of the D.C. Circuit panel’s initial ruling and proposed remedy. The DOJ brief stated, among other things, that, “[w]hile we do not agree with all of the reasoning in the panel’s opinion,” the DOJ agrees with the panel’s conclusion that “a removal restriction for the Director of the CFPB is an unwarranted limitation on the President’s executive power” and that “the panel correctly concluded … that the proposed remedy for the constitutional violation is to sever the provision limiting the President’s authority to remove the CFPB’s Director, not to declare the entire agency and its operations unconstitutional.” As covered recently on InfoBytes, the DOJ presented arguments that differed both from the CFPB and from the positions previously presented by the Obama Administration in briefing submitted on behalf of the United States back in December.
Also, as mentioned above, on April 3, the DOJ filed an unopposed motion seeking ten minutes of argument time for the United States at the May 24 en banc hearing.
Amicus Curiae in Support of PHH. The March 10 deadline in the en banc proceeding also brought about the filing of seven amicus curiae briefs in support of PHH’s claims and/or defenses. Six of these filings took the position that the Bureau’s current structure violates separation-of-powers principles:
- Brief on Rehearing en banc of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners
- Brief on Rehearing en banc of ACA International as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners
- Brief on Rehearing en banc of the Cato Institute as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners
- En Bank Brief of Amici Curiae RD Legal Partners, LP, RD Legal Funding, LLC, RD Legal Finance, LLC and Roni Dersovitz in Support of Petitioners
- State National Bank of Big Spring, 60 Plus Association, Inc.; and Competitive Enterprise Institute as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners
- Brief for the States of Missouri, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners
A seventh—filed by a combined group of 13 banking and residential real estate-related organizations—argued in support of the company’s interpretation of the RESPA. According to this brief, the CFPB incorrectly changed a long-standing RESPA interpretation that permitted the use of captive reinsurance companies under appropriate circumstances. The changed interpretation was contrary to the Act and to the CFPB’s own regulation. The brief also argued that the Bureau improperly changed the interpretation and applied the new interpretation in an enforcement action without proper notice.
CFPB Issues Annual Consumer Complaint Report
On April 3, the CFPB published its Consumer Response Annual Report, providing a review of the CFPB’s complaint process and a description of complaints received during January 1 through December 31, 2016. According to the report, the Bureau handled 291,400 consumer complaints—a 7 percent increase from the total number of complaints in 2015. The top three categories, representing about 67 percent of complaints, were debt collection, credit reporting, and mortgages. The Bureau also received complaints related to bank services; credit and prepaid cards; consumer, student, and payday loans; and money transfers. Five years ago, the Bureau began accepting consumer complaints, and since then has handled, according to the CFPB, approximately 1,136,000 complaints.
Supreme Court Remands Texas Credit Card Surcharge Case
On April 3, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in a case challenging a Texas law that bars retailers from imposing credit card surcharges, and remanded the case to the Fifth Circuit in light of its ruling last week in Expressions Hair Design, that a similar statute in New York regulated merchants’ First Amendment rights. In Rowell, a landscaping business, a computer networking company, a self-storage facility, and an event design and production company sought to challenge a Texas law allowing merchants to charge different prices to customers who pay with cash and customers who pay with a credit card, but barring merchants from describing the price difference as a surcharge for credit cards, leaving them to describe it instead as a discount for using cash. The Fifth Circuit held that the Texas law did not violate the retailers’ free speech rights, aligning it with the Second Circuit in its September 2015 ruling in the Expressions Hair Design litigation against New York State.
As previously reported on InfoBytes, the Supreme Court last week in the Expressions case unanimously rejected the Second Circuit’s conclusion that the New York credit card law regulates conduct alone, rather than speech. As explained in the Supreme Court’s opinion, the law at issue “is not like a typical price regulation,” which regulates a seller’s conduct by dictating how much to charge for an item. Rather, the Court explained, the law regulates “how sellers may communicate their prices.” (emphasis added). The Supreme Court, however, did not address the question of whether the law unconstitutionally restricts speech.
CFPB Director Cordray Faces Tough Questioning During House Financial Services Committee Hearing
On April 5, CFPB Director Richard Cordray appeared before the House Financial Services Committee in order to “report on the Bureau’s activities and face questions from lawmakers about the harm those activities cause consumers.” As explained in a memorandum issued by the Committee in advance of the hearing, Section 1016 of the Dodd-Frank Act requires the Bureau Director to publish a semi-annual report on the Bureau’s activities and to testify on the report before the House Financial Services and Senate Banking Committees. The April 5 hearing explored the Bureau’s most recent two reports—Spring 2016 and Fall 2016.
Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) used Wednesday’s hearing to, among other things, make a case for the firing of the Director for cause. Describing the Bureau as an “unelected, unaccountable and unconstitutional” agency, the Chairman argued that “[f]or all the harm inflicted upon consumers, [Director Cordray] should be dismissed by the President.” The Chairman thereafter “call[ed] upon the president—yet again—to do just that, and to do it immediately.” In addition to debating the constitutionality of the agency, the Committee also spent time discussing the timing (and true extent) of the Bureau’s involvement in certain recent investigations and enforcement actions the CFPB has taken credit for.
Meanwhile, the Democrats on the Committee urged Cordray to stand firm amid efforts to oust him. In her opening statement, the Panel’s Ranking Member, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) thanked the Director for his “sustained strong leadership” and for “doing exactly the job [he is] supposed to do,” and “doing it well.” Rep. Waters also characterized the Bureau as “an invaluable ally to consumers” whose “work must continue.”
As previously covered on InfoBytes, GOP committee members have been calling for the abolition of the CFPB, suggesting both that “President Trump should immediately fire CFPB Director Richard Cordray” and that “the agency must be functionally terminated,” so that “[c]onsumer protection can instead come through an accountable and constitutional process.” By contrast, Democrats on the committee have consistently urged the President to reject calls by GOP members to fire the CFPB Director noting, among other things, that an attempt by the President to fire Director Cordray “for cause” would be hard-pressed to withstand a legal challenge.
FDIC Releases April List of CRA Compliance Examinations
On April 5, the FDIC published its monthly list of state nonmember banks recently evaluated for compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The list reports CRA evaluation ratings assigned to institutions in January 2017. Monthly lists of all state nonmember banks whose evaluations have been made publicly available can be accessed through the FDIC’s website.
CFPB Releases Updated Supervision and Examination Materials
On March 31, the CFPB released updates to sections of its Supervision and Examination Manual as required by the updated Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council’s Uniform Interagency Consumer Compliance Rating System. The revised CFPB Supervision Examination Cycle Overview highlights the continuous exam cycle from pre-examination/scoping procedures to the monitoring and corrective actions stage, and provides additional details on its “prioritization” approach to examining, which considers the “large number, size, and complexity of entities falling under its supervisory authority.” Updates were also made to the Examination Process which offers further details on the exam cycle. The updated Scope Summary template provides examination background information on the entity as well as details regarding prudential and state regulators, communication plans, institution product lines to be reviewed, complaints, outstanding enforcement actions or other open matters, and risk summaries. Lastly, updates have also been made to the Examination Report Template—which provides the scope of review and consumer compliance rating based on the findings of the exam—and the Supervisory Letter Template—which references matters requiring attention or that need to be corrected based on the Bureau’s review.