Credit Discrimination

PRF Law’s Credit Discrimination Practice represents people who have been unfairly denied credit or access to credit by banks, other financial services companies, and governments.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) prohibits creditors from discriminating against credit applicants based on their sex, race, color, national origin, religion, marital status, age, or because the person’s income derives from any public assistance program. ECOA applies to home loans, auto loans, credit cards, student loans, farm loans, and other small business loans. Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act also prohibits race and national origin discrimination in credit decisions. And certain state and local laws prohibit credit discrimination.

The Credit Rights We Enforce:

PRF Law enforces the rights of people to be free of credit discrimination, including:

  • The discriminatory denial of credit or refinancing, including for home loans, auto loans, credit cards, student loans, farm loans, and other small business loans.

  • Discrimination in the terms of credit being provided, such as offering a higher interest rate or a smaller amount of credit. 

  • Retaliation for making complaints about credit discrimination.

Making an Impact

Peter Romer-Friedman obtained one of the largest settlements in the history of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the first settlement with a digital platform that steered credit advertisements away from people based on their protected statuses.

  • In Keepseagle v. Vilsack, No. 99 Civ. 03119 (D.D.C.), Peter and his colleagues represented a class of tens of thousands of Native American farmers and ranchers who had been denied farm loans and loan servicing by the Department of Agriculture for decades. After years of litigation, the Plaintiffs and legal team negotiated a groundbreaking settlement in which the USDA paid $760 million—including $80 million in debt relief—and far-reaching programmatic relief to improve the services that the USDA provides to Native American farmers and ranchers. The settlement approved by the Court was an extraordinary outcome: according to an expert report prepared for the Plaintiffs by a former USDA economist, the settlement’s $760 million in monetary relief represented about 98% of what the plaintiffs could possibly have won at trial. President Barack Obama applauded the Keepseagle settlement as “an important step forward in remedying USDA’s unfortunate civil rights history.” 

  • In Mobley v. Facebook, Inc., No. 16 Civ. 06440 (N.D. Cal.), Peter was lead counsel in a first-of-its-kind challenge to Facebook’s practice of denying credit advertisements to Facebook users based on their race, sex, and other protected statuses. Peter was the chief negotiator in obtaining a settlement in which Facebook agreed to far-reaching changes to its advertising platform to prevent credit discrimination, including creating a special mandatory portal for the creation of housing ads without discriminatory filtering options.