At Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor podcast. Levine, the former director of the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau, is now the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, where he is likely to serve as a model for other state and local regulators. .
In 2020, Congress passed the No Surprises Act to protect medical consumers from surprise bills when they received emergency treatment, only to later discover the doctor did not accept their insurance. The Act established a process by which, rather than bill patients directly, out-of-network doctors and insurers would engage in mandatory arbitration. Today, the NY […]
Here. New § 1002.6 provides in part: ECOA “does not provide that the ‘effects test’ applies for determining whether there is discrimination in violation of the Act.” The regulation also purports to define discouragement and covers special purpose credit programs. I wonder how long before a court challenge is filed.
Tamar Kricheli-Katz of Tel Aviv University and Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU have written The Distributional Costs of Effective Consumer Regulation. Here’s the abstract: Disclosure is a cornerstone of consumer protection regulation, yet little is known about its differential effects across consumers. We study how disclosure format influences decision-making across the income distribution, drawing on insights from […]
Last month, we published a guest post by Hofstra consumer law scholar Norm Silber expressing serious concerns about a proposed Roundup class action settlement. Professors Silber and Myriam Gilles of Northwestern have coauthored an amicus brief urging a federal court to grant injunctive or declaratory relief to enable the court to evaluate aspects of the […]
Alexander Panelli, a consumer who bought sheets that Target markets as “100% cotton” and “800 thread count” sued Target for violating California consumer law, alleging that the thread counts were actually much lower. In his amended complaint, he noted that it is “physically impossible for cotton threads to be fine enough to allow for 600 […]
The case is Stephens v. Am. Arb. Ass’n Inc., No. CV-25-01650, 2026 WL 878981 (D. Ariz. Mar. 31, 2026). Here’s a paragraph from the opinion on the antitrust claim: With regard to the first element of Plaintiffs’ claim under § 2 of the Sherman Act— monopoly power in the relevant market—the AAA states in its […]
That’s the report from Douglas Gillison. According to the story, the administration did that in February, the same month in which the administration argued to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that its decisions concerning the CFPB were not final and so not reviewable. A decision that the Bureau won’t have an office sounds pretty […]
So American Banker’s Kate Berry reports. So now the settlement will be re-negotiated and the victims will get something, right? If only. From the article: [T]he Justice Department said it would proceed without court oversight, using a federal provision that does not require the court’s involvement. Harmeet K. Dhillon, DOJ’s assistant attorney general in the […]