FTC Strikes Deals to Ignore Unlawful Credit Discrimination
The Federal Trade Commission recently announced deals with two auto dealers, along with the former general manager of a third, promising not to enforce—or even help enforce—their court-ordered obligations to maintain fair lending programs and not engage in unlawful credit discrimination.
The Northern District of Illinois, which presided over one case, says it was never given the opportunity to evaluate one of the new agreements, and Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes, whose office was a coplaintiff in another of the affected cases, calls the move “outrageous.”
The FTC is doing away with the obligations because the defendants didn’t explicitly instruct its salespeople to treat Black and Latino borrowers differently. Previously, the FTC accused all three of charging people of color more in discretionary markups and add-on fees on average compared to white borrowers. (Disclosure: The author of this article previously worked for the FTC but did not participate in any...
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