A federal judge in Texas has reversed a Biden administration rule that wiped medical debt from credit reports, affecting nearly 15 million Americans.
The rule, which did not discharge debt but changed how credit scores could be calculated, would have removed $50 million of medical debt from credit reports.
U.S. District Judge Sean Jordan, who was appointed by Donald Trump during his first term, claimed in his decision that the Fair Credit Reporting Act does not allow the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to remove medical debt from reports.
Trump v CASA ruled universal injunctions beyond the power of the courts. That means that the ruling can only offer relief to the parties in the individual case. As credit reporting agencies are nationwide entities this case would, by nature, apply to those agencies across the whole nation. I will imagine that this ruling applies only to those agencies party to this lawsuit. Even if that’s not all of the big three, this suit will still signal to the executive that action against other agencies won’t hold up in court and the CFPB will likely just give up on the rule.
This is my understanding. I’m not a lawyer. This is not legal advice ™.
How convenient: in typical ‘David vs. Goliath’-type cases of individuals being abused by huge corporations, good rulings in favor of the little guy apply extremely narrowly, while bad rulings have vast reach.
That’s exactly the problem with the CASA ruling. It’s not localized by state,or even locality. If it were the battles could be fought state by state. Instead every individual person must fight their battle alone unless they can convince a court to certify their class for a class action. Even then the conservative justices affirmed in concurrences that they foresaw that work around and signaled that they were willing to scrutinize class certifications.
Just one person could take down flock license plate readers because it violates their 4th amendment right. It’s already been ruled in several criminal cases and a lawsuit has moved forward. They can’t reasonably avoid tracking one person because taking the photo is the issue in the first place.