CFPB field hearing on consumer arbitration, live-tweeted and livestreamed

The following consumer advocates will be live-tweeting today's CFPB field hearing on arbitration, which gets underway at 11am. Ellen Taverna, NACA – @NACAdvocate Christine Hines, Public Citizen – @chrhines Michelle Schwartz, Alliance for Justice – @SchwartzAFJ NCLC – @NCLC4consumers AFR – @realbankreform You should also be able to watch a web livestream of the hearing here.

Richard Cordray’s remarks on the CFPB arbitration report

Here's the text of CFPB Director Richard Cordray's remarks on the arbitration report, to be delivered at today's field hearing in Newark.  He summarizes the legal backdrop to the Bureau's report, its empirical approach, and its key findings (which I've highlighted in bold). Well worth reading in full.                                                                            Prepared Remarks of Richard Cordray Director […]

Supreme Court hears argument on disparate-impact liability this morning

About an hour ago, the Supreme Court finished hearing oral argument on whether disparate impact claims are cognizable under the Fair Housing Act (as every circuit to address the issue has held since the Act's enactment in 1968). This blog has covered the issue repeatedly over the past few years. This morning, Pemy Levy of […]

Consumer issues in tonight’s State of the Union speech

The President highlighted consumer issues several times in his speech tonight.  Here's some of the relevant text: On Dodd-Frank and the CFPB: "We believed that sensible regulations could prevent another crisis, shield families from ruin, and encourage fair competition. Today, we have new tools to stop taxpayer-funded bailouts and a new consumer watchdog to protect […]

Amato and Willis op-ed in L.A. Times

Lauren Willis (of Loyola Los Angeles) and Theresa Amato (of the Fair Contracts Project) have a great op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times on what to do about consumer financial illiteracy. "There are dozens of entities devoted to educating you about all things financial," they write, "[b]ut none of it is working very well." Financial […]

Federal court rejects First Premier Bank’s bid for a gag order against credit-card-comparison site Cardhub.com; subprime credit-card issuer surrenders

Just two days after a federal judge in South Dakota rejected a bid by First Premier Bank for a gag order against the credit-card-comparison site CardHub.com, the subprime credit card issuer abandoned its controversial lawsuit in a one-sentence document filed late on Friday. First Premier’s surrender comes after a backlash of criticism over its litigation […]

Troubling sale of Corinthian Colleges set to close soon

by Maura Dundon (Senior Policy Counsel, Center for Responsible Lending) The sale of Corinthian Colleges (the for-profit college chain that operates Everest, WyoTech, and Heald) to the student loan debt collector ECMC is poised to close today. The deal has raised serious concerns about the fate of Corinthian students and whether the new entity represents […]

Eleventh Circuit: Attempt to Pick Off a Class Representative Doesn’t Moot the Class Action

by Deepak Gupta The Eleventh Circuit issued issued a very comprehensive and well reasoned opinion this week on a hot issue in consumer class-action practice: Can a defendants' attempt to "pick off" a class representative moot the class action?  Or, as the opinion puts it: "This case presents the question whether a defendant may moot […]