Paul F. Hancock is a partner at the law firm of K&L Gates LLP. He served as a trial attorney and senior manager in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for more than 25 years and as a state deputy attorney general for South Florida.
It is nonsensical for the government to sue one of the leading lenders in an underserved minority community as a means of encouraging more lending in that community.
A recent blog post from the agency raises more questions than it answers.
The agency has suggested it could go beyond enforcing fair-lending laws to urge financial institutions to help narrow the wealth gap. But those very same laws pose obstacles to achieving that goal.
The past 16 years have seen the pendulum swing far too wide between lax civil rights enforcement on one extreme and overreaching on the other.