On July 24, the California Office of Administrative Law approved the Civil Rights Council’s (the Council) proposed amendment to California’s Employment Regulations Relating to Criminal History, which are set to become effective on October 1, 2023. Among other changes, the amendment modifies the existing regulations regarding employers’ investigation of a job applicant’s criminal history. Notably, the amendment expands the definition of “employer” under those regulations in such a way that could potentially implicate a background screener conducting a background check on behalf of an employer.

On June 6, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen signed into law Legislative Bill 92, which, among many other subjects, amends the Nebraska Installment Loan Act (the NILA). Previously, a license was required for a lender seeking to take advantage of the usury authority provided by the NILA and also for any person that holds or acquires any rights of ownership, servicing, or other forms of participation in a loan under the NILA. Legislative Bill 92 expands the scope of the licensing requirement to “any person that is not a financial institution who, at or after the time a [covered] loan is made by a financial institution, markets, owns in whole or in part, holds, acquires, services, or otherwise participates in such loan.” “Financial institution” is broadly defined to include all federally insured depository institutions. And the licensing requirement, by its terms, applies to entities providing limited services and/or purchasing limited interests (not just the predominant economic interest) in loans by financial institutions of $25,000 or less, with rates exceeding the Nebraska general usury limit.

According to a recent report by WebRecon, court filings under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) were down for the month of June. This reverses the upward swing seen in these filings in May. Complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) were down in May and remained down for June.

On July 27, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a new blog post, positing that cashflow data, broadly defined as the various inflows, outflows, and accumulated amounts in a consumer’s checking and savings accounts, may provide lenders with a better picture of a consumer’s ability to repay their loans than using a credit score.

The modern “Information Age” has been defined by rapidly increasing interconnectivity and dependence on the internet by consumers and businesses alike. One side effect of these technological advances has been the increasing frequency of cyberattacks and data breaches perpetrated by sophisticated cyber criminals using ever-evolving methods of infiltration. And, as can be expected, along with the increase in data breaches over the past few decades, we have seen the rise of data breach litigation, and in particular, consumer class action litigation against the companies who have been victimized by those data breaches. The Fourth Circuit has seen several high-profile data breach class actions. Such class actions often face difficult uphill battles in proving the necessary elements for class certification, particularly when it comes to defining a theory of harm that can be proven by common evidence across the class. Last month, Judge Gibney of the Richmond Division of the Eastern District of Virginia dismissed one such data breach class action case for a more basic problem: the named plaintiffs could not demonstrate they had suffered any concrete injury sufficient to establish Article III standing at all, let alone damages that could be proven classwide. Holmes v. Elephant Ins. Co., No. 3:22cv487, 2023 WL 4183380 (E.D. Va. June 26, 2023).

On July 26, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) released the summer edition of its Supervisory Highlights report, providing a high-level overview of alleged unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices (UDAAP) identified by the agency during examinations from July 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023. The findings included in the report cover examinations in the areas of auto origination, auto servicing, consumer reporting, debt collection, deposits, fair lending, information technology, mortgage origination, mortgage servicing, payday and small dollar lending, and remittances.

Please join Troutman Pepper Partner Chris Willis and his colleague Kim Phan as they discuss the new California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) and the creation of the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA), California’s first state agency focused exclusively on privacy. They also dive into the CPPA’s recent amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), discussing the timeline, overview, and technical guidance for companies. And with 23 topical areas of regulation — what we can expect from the CPRA’s next set of rules.

On July 13, U.S. Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Roger Marshall (R-KS) introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that seeks to examine the adequacy of current anti-money laundering obligations (set forth in the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)) as applied to crypto assets, crypto asset kiosks…

As recently discussed on our podcast here, section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act) amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to require lenders to collect information about small business credit applications they receive, including geographic and demographic data concerning the principal owners, lending decisions, and the price of credit. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued its proposed rule in 2021, and after considering the over 2,500 comments it received, on March 30, 2023, the CFPB issued the massive, highly technical, and complicated Final Rule. The Final Rule and its accompanying discussion and analysis, as well as the Official Commentary totals 888 pages exclusive of the 123-page Filing Instruction Guide and numerous other documents released by the Bureau. In this fourth in a multi-post blog series (first post available here, second here, third here), we will take a closer look at the anti-discouragement provisions in the Final Rule.