The Wall Street Journal reports that a “senior student-loan official in the Trump administration said he would resign Thursday and endorse canceling most of the nation’s outstanding student debt, calling the student-loan system ‘fundamentally broken.'” “Wayne Johnson was appointed in 2017 by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as chief operating officer of the Office of Federal […]
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The Federal Trade Commission today charged the developer of three "stalking" apps with violating consumer's privacy and creating security vulnerabilities. The apps allowed purchasers to monitor a user's GPS location, text messages, and photos without the knowledge of the user. The FTC's complaint was announced concurrently with a consent order under which Retina X Studios […]
Save the Date Call for Papers and Speakers Teaching Consumer Law Conference – Santa Fe, New Mexico, 29 & 30 May 2020 Teaching Consumer Law: Back to Basics? The Center for Consumer Law at the University of Houston Law Center, in cooperation with the University of New Mexico School of Law, is organizing its twelfth […]
The Federal Trade Commission has issued the National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2019. The Data Book contains information about the DNC Registry from October 1, 2018, to September 30, 2019. It provides information on robocall complaints, the types of calls consumers reported to the FTC, and a complete state-by-state analysis. […]
The Supreme Court today issued orders stemming from this morning's conference in which the Justices considered what new cases to take up. Among those cases is Seila Law v. CFPB, which raises the question of the constitutionality of the placing the agency under a director protected against removal at will by the President. The Court […]
The CFPB announced last Friday the planned formation of a "Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law." According to the Bureau, "[t]he taskforce will examine the existing legal and regulatory environment facing consumers and financial services providers and report recommendations on ways to improve and strengthen consumer financial laws and regulations to CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger." […]
NPR reported today on 5 ways that the Trump Administration has undermined the Affordable Care Act. Among the takeaways: Overall, [Professor] Nicholas Bagley says, the ACA has been "pretty resilient to everything, so far, that the Trump administration has thrown at it." Some of Trump's efforts to hobble the law have been caught up in […]
After reading the post below, reader Ted Mermin of California Low-Income Consumer Coalition emailed: Last week the Governor signed a groundbreaking law providing an automatic exemption from bank levy for the last $1724 in a debtor’s account. According to the law’s findings, debt collectors routinely clean out consumers’ bank accounts, leaving nothing to pay for […]
California's Governor Newsom today signed into law legislation intended to to protect consumers from predatory lending practices that create debt traps for families already struggling financially. The bill bars payday lenders from charging high interest rates – which in the past have soared as high as 200 percent – on loans between $2,500 and $10,000. […]
Next week, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger will deliver the statutory “Semi-Annual Report of the CFPB” to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee. On his blog, US PIRG's Ed Mierzwinski suggests questions that the committee members should ask, here.