On June 17, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) officially rescinded its December 2020 advisory opinion on special purpose credit programs (SPCPs) under Regulation B, which implements the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA). The rescission aligns with the Bureau’s recent views on SPCPs, including those expressed in the Bureau’s April 2026 final rule amending the SPCP provisions of Regulation B (the Final Rule) (discussed here).

Background

The CFPB’s 2020 advisory opinion was intended to address regulatory uncertainty regarding how Regulation B applies to SPCPs designed and implemented by for-profit organizations to meet special social needs. Specifically, it clarified what a for-profit organization must include in a written plan establishing and administering an SPCP, and what research and data may be used to support a determination that such a program is needed to benefit a particular class of persons. Among other things, the advisory opinion stated that SPCP participants could be required to share common characteristics such as race, national origin, or sex.

The Bureau’s Reasoning for Its Rescission

The Bureau identified two principal reasons for the rescission. First, the advisory opinion is outdated. As discussed in our April 2026 post, the Final Rule amended the SPCP provisions of Regulation B in material ways, including by adding new requirements for written plans that for-profit organizations must satisfy in order to operate an SPCP, which the advisory opinion does not address.

Second, and more significantly, the advisory opinion contains statements that directly conflict with the Final Rule. Most notably, the advisory opinion’s statement that SPCP participants may share common characteristics such as race, national origin, or sex is squarely at odds with the Final Rule, which prohibits for-profit organizations from using race, color, national origin, or sex, or any combination thereof, as an eligibility criterion for an SPCP.

The advisory opinion also applied a “probably would not receive credit” standard to assess the need for an SPCP, while the Final Rule tightened that standard to require a showing that participants actually would not receive credit absent the program.

Constitutional Concerns

The Bureau also cited the same constitutional concerns that it flagged in its Final Rule as support for rescinding the advisory opinion. To the extent the advisory opinion could be read as encouraging private actors to create programs that discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, or national origin, the Bureau noted that government encouragement of such private conduct may itself raise serious constitutional questions. The rescission is intended, in part, to remove the Bureau’s imprimatur from programs that could give rise to those concerns.

Our Take

For-profit organizations that have relied on the 2020 advisory opinion to structure or administer SPCPs should instead look to the SPCP standards in the Final Rule for guidance. As detailed in our April 2026 post, the Final Rule prohibits for-profit SPCPs from using race, color, national origin, or sex as eligibility criteria, tightens the documentation and evidence requirements for any SPCP that uses other prohibited bases as program criteria, and imposes a per-borrower evidence requirement for each participant in such a program. Although the Final Rule is currently being challenged in court and is likely to be tied up in litigation over a period of years, the SPCP standards in the Final Rule outline the federal administration’s views regarding what constitutes a permissible SPCP. Accordingly, for-profit creditors maintaining existing SPCPs should evaluate their programs against these revised standards promptly.