In the American Banker. According to Berry, the CFPB wants to eliminate the use of disparate impact for proving violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Because it’s so difficult to win using the other principal way of proving ECOA violations, disparate treatment (and the Seventh Circuit bars the use of disparate treatment under ECOA ), that would make ECOA cases very hard for plaintiffs to win. But the CFPB is planning two dozen rulemakings and Berry writes:
What is unclear is how the CFPB will achieve its deregulatory goals given that the Trump administration wants to fire up to 90% of the bureau’s staff. CFPB employees are currently being paid not to work while the agency’s legal battle with the National Treasury Employees Union plays out in court.
“Even fully-staffed, the CFPB never had this much on its agenda,” said Christopher Willis, a partner at the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke. “It’s obviously very large in its level of ambition, and when you have the [Trump] administration saying they want to cut the staff by 80% to 90%, doing all of this seems like it would require a lot of people — or take forever.”
Sometimes the Trump administration seems to frustrate its own goals–which here is a positive.
