Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed back against the Trump administration’s proposed rule change at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she warned could roll back key federal protections that prevent discrimination in lending.
Reminds of Pre-1970s Style Lending Discrimination
On Monday, in a post on X, Clinton highlighted how, within living memory, “women were forced to have a male co-signer to get a credit card or a home loan,” a practice that was outlawed just a few decades ago.
“Now, the Trump administration wants to end protections against such discrimination,” she said, amid a newly proposed rule by the CFPB called the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (Regulation B), which essentially seeks to revise how the Equal Credit Opportunity Act is enforced.
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Most notably, it seeks to eliminate “disparate impact” liability, a legal standard that allows challenges to lending policies that disproportionately harm women or minorities, even without explicit intent to discriminate.
Clinton concluded her post by encouraging people to say “No Way” on the National Fair Housing Alliance’s public comment page, aimed at mobilizing public input on the proposed changes.
Trump’s Repeated Attacks On The CFPB
Since returning to the office this year, President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the CFPB, including laying off a significant portion of its workforce, in a bid to shift the agency’s focus toward financial fraud and away from consumer protections.
Leading advocacy groups have warned that Trump’s attempts to gut the agency have already cost consumers $18 billion in higher bank fees and canceled restitution.
The groups, Student Borrower Protection Center and the Consumer Federation of America, have also noted that the CFPB has dropped or settled 22 enforcement cases initiated from under the prior administration, which included actions against JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC) and Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE:COF), among others.
Photo Courtesy: Evan El-Amin on Shutterstock.com
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