Does Loper Bright limit the CFPB’s power?

As I noted in yesterday’s post, Loper Bright preserves agency authority when Congress authorized the agency to exercise discretion. Loper Bright cited as an example of such a case Michigan v. EPA, in which, Loper Bright noted, Congress used a term or phrase that gives agencies flexibility, “such as ‘appropriate’ or ‘reasonable.” Now let’s look […]

How much deference must courts give federal consumer protection agency determinations that conduct is unfair after Loper Bright?

Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided Loper Bright, in which it proclaimed that “Chevron is overruled.” But now we have to figure out what that means in particular contexts. One such context is federal consumer protection agency UDAAP statutes, like the FTC Act and Consumer Financial Protection Act. When those statutes give the agencies the power […]

Call for Abstracts for the Consumer Law Scholars Conference

We received the following Call for Abstracts for the Consumer Law Scholars Conference, always an important event for consumer law scholars: We are pleased to announce the seventh annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference (CLSC), which will be held Thursday and Friday, March 6-7, 2025 at Boston University. Save the date! The purpose of the CLSC is to support in-progress scholarship, foster […]

National Consumer Law Center releases student-loan toolkit

The National Consumer Law Center has released a student-loan toolkit. According to NCLC, it is “a free online resource to help borrowers navigate the student loan system and manage their debt. It’s also a resource for financial counselors, legal aid attorneys, and other advocates who advise borrowers on the options and strategies for their loan […]

FTC Annual Report on Refunds to Consumers

The Federal Trade Commission annual Report on Refunds to Consumers tallies the total refunds to consumers in 2023 from FTC enforcement actions at more than $324 million. The report provides a breakdown of the total amount refunded by the FTC nationally, as well as the amount mailed to each state, and also includes a list […]

The Biden-Trump debate and consumer protection

Will consumer protection come up during the debate? My guess is not. It seems unlikely that a moderator or President Trump would raise it. I could see President Biden bringing up junk fees, as he has called for their regulation, in response to a question, though I am not expecting it. The headline issues have […]

Strahilevitz & Liu paper offers theory for Article III standing in data breach cases

Lior Strahilevitz of Chicago and Lisa Yao Liu of the Columbia Business School have written Cash Substitution and Deferred Consumption as Data Breach Harms. Here’s the abstract: Federal courts have long been divided over whether consumers whose data are breached suffer an “injury in fact” that gives them standing to sue under Article III of the […]

Solove & Hartzog: The Failure of Data Security Law

Daniel J. Solove of George Washington Woodrow Hartzog of Boston University and the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society have posted on SSRN a chapter from their book, Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It. The chapter is titled The Failure of Data Security Law. Here’s the abstract: In […]