AP’s Ken Sweet: Employees at the nation’s consumer financial watchdog say it’s become toothless under Trump

Here. The article makes it look like the administration is dedicated to keeping federal employees from working. So much for the promise to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse. Some excerpts: * * * Employees are reluctant even to talk to one another, out of fear that a conversation between two employees would be considered a […]

Texas court ends federal medical-debt credit reporting rule

A Texas district court, in response to a joint request from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and trade industry associations, just vacated the bureau’s own rule that had prohibited most medical debt on credit reports. The Biden-era CFPB finalized a rule in January to ban medical bills on credit reports and to prohibit lenders from […]

The American Prospect’s heartbreaking CFPB update: looks like a boom for scammers

By Maureen Tkacik and James Baratta, it’s captioned Hardly Workin’. It covers a lot of ground, but here’s one excerpt: In the meantime, formal entries into the CFPB’s consumer complaints database have soared, suggesting that the business of junk fees, predatory terms, and routine swindles is booming just as loudly as the Prospect has been predicting it would since […]

Call for Abstracts for the Berkeley Annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference

We received the following call for abstracts (apologies for the formatting issues): We are pleased to announce the Eighth Annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference will be held in Berkeley on Thursday and Friday, March 5-6, 2026! Please save the date!  The purpose of the CLSC is to support in-progress scholarship, foster a community of consumer […]

Eighth Circuit cancels FTC’s subscription rule

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday nullified the Federal Trade Commission’s Click-to-Cancel rule. The rule addressed unfair and deceptive practices in subscriptions (or negative options marketing). The FTC aimed to remove misrepresentations in subscription practices and to generally make canceling subscriptions as easy as it is to sign up for them. In reversing the […]

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 […]

Car manufacturer cannot enforce customer’s arbitration agreement with dealers, says California Supreme Court

Yesterday, the California Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in Ford Motor Warranty Cases.  In each of the consolidated cases, plaintiffs who had purchased Ford vehicles sued Ford, alleging defects in the cars they purchased, violations of express and implied warranties, and fraudulent concealment. Ford moved to arbitrate on the grounds that the sales contracts between […]

Will banks bring class actions?

That’s a possibility raised by Alan Kaplinsky in his analysis of the Supreme Court’s universal injunction case, Trump v. CASA, at Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor Blog. Because CASA will make it harder for consumer financial service companies to seek injunctions against CFPB regs, etc., Mr. Kaplinsky suggests they may resort to class actions, though […]