Category Archives: Uncategorized

Two lawsuits challenging Trump’s “Election Integrity” Commission

Two new lawsuits challenge conduct of Trump's "Election Integrity" Commission.  ACLU v. Trump maintains that the Commission is meeting in secret and hiding its records in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Read the complaint here. And then there is Public Citizen v. U.S. Department of the Army, which Public Citizen describes this way: The Privacy Act […]

Judge gives preliminary approval to Wells Fargo settlement

The Washington Post reports: Wells Fargo has received preliminary approval to pay out $142 million to customers affected by the bank’s sales practices scandal. A federal judge gave preliminary approval Saturday to the deal that would settle claims over fraudulent accounts going back to 2002. The San Francisco-based bank and lawyers for customers reached the […]

“The CFPB Wants to Create an Arbitration Database. Companies Will Hate That.”

That's the name of this article by C. Ryan Barber (possibly behind a paywall). Here's an excerpt: When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau expanded its public database to include narratives of negative customer experiences, banks such as Wells Fargo and other industry players worried about being named and shamed. Now, a new public database could be going up […]

Re De’pt of Educ efforts to eliminate protections for student borrowers

I try not to use the blog to tout Public Citizen's own work, but nonetheless want to provide two updates on our work to maintain protections for student borrowers in the face of a Department of Education no longer interested in doing so: First, on Friday, Public Citizen and Harvard's Project on Predatory Student Lending […]

CFPB director Richard Cordray’s prepared remarks on the agency’s new arbitration rule

CFPB director Richard Cordray's prepared remarks on the new arbitration rule: Thank you for joining us on this call. Today, we are announcing a final rule that prevents financial companies from using mandatory arbitration clauses to deny groups of consumers their day in court. A cherished tenet of our justice system is that no one, […]

Recent FTC consumer protection efforts

Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission announced two actions potentially of interest to readers: The FTC announced that it halted an operation that unlawfully shared and sold consumers' sensitive data. The operators of a lead generation business agreed to settle charges brought by the FTC that the company misled consumers into filling out loan applications and […]

Recent announcements of DOJ’s Consumer Protection Branch

June 26, 2017 – Owner of New England Compounding Center Sentenced for Racketeering Leading to Nationwide Fungal Meningitis Outbreak June 22, 2017 – Pharmacy Owner and Director of Compliance Charged with Defrauding United States and Distributing Adulterated Drugs June 15, 2017 – Department of Justice Observes World Elder Abuse Awareness Day June 15, 2017 – […]

Enabling Facebook Users to Protect Their Free Speech Rights

by Paul Alan Levy An important appeal is pending in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals – the highest appellate court in D.C. The federal government served D.C. warrants on Facebook, demanding access to the entirety of 90 days worth of communications in three separate Facebook accounts, including identifying information.  (Presumably, the reason why […]