State class actions in Virginia are not happening yet. This week, Va. Gov. Abigail Spanberger vetoed SB229/HB449, a bill that finally would have established a state-level class action process. Although Va. consumers can participate in federal class actions, the bill would have filled a gap for them to band together to pursue claims that are […]
Author Archives: Christine Hines
Public interest groups filed an amicus brief this past week in the case Gemini Trust Company, LLC v. National Association of Consumer Advocates, Inc. (NACA), opposing the company’s attempt to force arbitration of the dispute. In 2024, *NACA sued Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange, in the District of Columbia Superior Court, alleging that the company’s terms […]
Will the Federal Trade Commission bring back its “click to cancel” rule? The FTC on Wednesday announced an “advance notice of proposed rulemaking,” inviting public feedback on whether to amend its regulation for automatic subscriptions (negative option rule). In October 2024, after years of observing rampant abuse of subscription traps harming consumers, the FTC finalized […]
The student loan delinquency rate for student loan borrowers grew from roughly zero to nearly 25 percent in 2025, according to a devastating report from The Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers. The report found that nearly 9 million student loan borrowers—or, one out of every five borrowers—are in default. Further, 3/4 of borrowers moving from […]
The Federal Trade Commission this week sued an “online question-and-answer service” and its CEO in a California federal court alleging that they deceived people into a monthly subscription service. According to the FTC, people would come across the service, Just Answer LLC, in an online search, and then the company would lead them to believe […]
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday issued an order confirming that the CFPB must continue to operate, smacking down the agency leadership’s recent efforts using re-interpretations of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to argue that the bureau would soon run out of funding. Following a Department […]
The Congressional Research Service, the research and analysis arm of Congress, last Friday released an updated summary to its report on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s budget. This update includes discussion on the budget reconciliation (P.L. 119-21) passed in July that drastically reduces the CFPB’s funding that it receives from the Federal Reserve. The agency’s […]
The news this week is the ongoing Big Tech campaign seeking a federal law to preempt state regulations on artificial intelligence. As reported, some members of Congress are attempting to push an AI preemption provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a must-pass federal bill. The provision would block state laws from regulating the […]
The debt collection industry, through its trade group ACA International and Fresno Credit Bureau, sued a Colorado official this week, seeking to nullify a state law that stops medical debt from being included on consumer credit reports. The debt collectors claim that the Colorado law is preempted by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the […]
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Federal Trade Commission’s emergency motion for stay on an injunction that bars the agency from moving ahead with a civil investigative demand (CID) it had issued to nonprofit media watchdog Media Matters. Media Matters sued the FTC in June to quash the CID, alleging that the FTC […]