Category Archives: Credit Reporting

Two recent essays attack the administration’s consumer protection moves

Seth Frotman & Tara Mikkilineni have written The Trump Administration Wants to Reboot Redlining at the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology’s Jolt Digest. Here’s an excerpt: [T] he Vought CFPB[] . . . . has quietly made a series of moves that would enable an unholy alliance of Big Tech and financial institutions to digitally […]

WaPo: Millions of Americans hit with bad credit [scores] after missed student loan payments

Here, by  Abha Bhattarai. According to the article “Credit scores dipped by more than 100 points for 2.2 million delinquent student loan borrowers, and 150 points or more for more than 1 million in the first three months of 2025, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.” Student loan borrowers […]

Seventh Circuit Pulls Back Standing for Failure to Note Credit Dispute

In 2022, in Ewing v. Med-1 Solutions, LLC, the Seventh Circuit held that a consumer is harmed by a credit report’s failure to note that a given debt is dispute–finding that it impacted the consumer’s creditworthiness and impacted their reputation, and thus that a consumer has standing to pursue a claim based on a debt […]

CFPB dismisses enforcement action against Solo Funds

The stipulation of dismissal is here. Here’s some of what the Bureau had said earlier about the case: The Bureau alleges that SoLo’s advertisements and loan disclosures tout no-interest loans when, in fact, virtually all loans on the SoLo Platform include a lender “tip” that goes to the lender, a SoLo “donation” that goes to […]

WSJ: Landlords Have a New Hardball Tactic: Tanking Your Credit Score

Here (behind paywall). The article describes how landlords hire debt collectors solely to report the purported debts and force tenants to pay. Because landlords won’t rent to people with such debts on their credit reports, according to the article, the strategy puts pressure on the consumer to pay whether the debt is in fact owed […]

CFPB Director Chopra ends term with prolific last month

The notice arrived Saturday morning. Rohit Chopra’s tenure as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had ended — by the new administration — well short of the completion of his five-year term. The past week was filled with grumbling from various industry corners and inquiring journalists wondering why Chopra had not already been forced […]

CFPB fines TD Bank $28M for wrongful credit reporting practices

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau just announced that it ordered TD Bank to pay $28 million in fines and in consumer redress over the bank’s credit reporting practices. It is the CFPB’s second enforcement action against TD Bank. “For years, the bank repeatedly shared inaccurate, negative information about its customers to consumer reporting companies. The […]

Eighth Circuit Affirms Sanctions for Experian’s Overbroad FCRA Discovery Tactics

Two consumers sued Experian after discovering the agency, was reporting an automobile loan as “discharged through bankruptcy,” when they had been making payments on the loan for years, and their attempts to correct the issue proved unsuccessful. For some reason, Experian responded by issuing sweeping discovery requests — including broad subpoenas issued to the law […]

Sixth Circuit Rejects Informational Injury Standing Theory under FCRA

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, many consumers have been unable to obtain relief for violations of their statutory rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Yesterday’s decision by the Sixth Circuit in Merck v. Walmart, Inc. is another case in that line. The plaintiff, Thomas Merck, had been extended a job […]

CFPB proposes rule removing medical bills from credit reports

Yesterday, the CFPB announced a proposed rule that would remove medical bills from most credit reports and add other limitations on the use of medical debt in lending. The agency’s press release is available here, and the proposed rule is available here. Comments will be open until at-least mid August.