WASHINGTON-This year marks the 15th anniversary of February 24, 1998.
It's a date that marks the beginning of a six month period for credit unions in the United States unlike any other period in their history.
On that day the Supreme Court ruled against credit unions in what was informally known as the AT&T Family FCU case, finding in favor of the bank plaintiffs who had argued that NCUA was misinterpreting the Federal Credit Union Act by allowing for multiple common bonds within one field of membership.
That ruling slammed the door on FOM expansions and threatened millions of Americans with being expelled from their credit unions, jeopardizing the very future of many CUs in the process. Credit unions themselves hedged their bets, with hundreds making the move to a community charter, even as uncertainty remained over what might happen to them, as well. Such charters are common now, but in the mid- to late-1990s many CUs served niche markets and were wary of opening to everyone. There was much discussion that just as those doors had been opened, now some credit unions would have to show those new members the door.
In the months that would follow would come a near round-the-clock effort to get Congress to pass the Credit Union Membership Access Act, otherwise known as HR 1151. As the current and ongoing effort to get the member business lending cap increased has made all too clear, legislation seldom passes in the Congress in which it is first proposed. A bill is proposed and then fights its way through committees and, if it survives that often terminal process, it either goes on to die in Congress or finds itself attached to another piece of legislation, that in turn often dies a slow death. The bill's sponsors and supporters are left to fight for their bill in the next session.
Relief from the Supreme Court ruling wasn't something credit unions could wait on the next Congress or the Congress after that to resolve. Although HR 1151 had been co-sponsored in 1997 by Pennsylvania Democrat Paul Kanjorski and Ohio Republic Steven LaTourette, it was the 1998 ruling that launched credit unions into all-out action to get other co-sponsors attached to it.
From the grassroots of every state in the country to the hallways of Congress, credit unions mobilized. They turned out volunteers, employees, and their millions of members to press their elected representatives to sign-on to the legislation. Recognizing their separate campaigns were dividing resources, CUNA and NAFCU, along with nearly everyone else, abandoned their independent efforts and came together to back a unified Campaign for Consumer Choice, the name making it clear the legislation wasn't about credit unions as much as it was about everyday Americans. State leagues launched individual campaigns in their own states, many of which were some of the most creative and innovative work done in the industry. Individual CUs gathered signatures in lobbies and weren't shy about suggesting to members that should their efforts fail in Congress, they may have to throw members out or shut down.
Perhaps nothing summed up credit unions' ability to respond to attacks than what came to be known as the "hot dog ad." When the banking industry ran an ad in the New York Times that showed a hot dog street vendor and the headline, "I'll Pay More Taxes Than The Credit Union Industry," credit unions went to work after discovering the vendor was just a model. Credit unions responded by finding a real hot dog vendor, Wendall Sisler, who had been laid off and couldn't get a loan from his bank, so he went to his credit union where he got a real loan for his real hot dog stand.
"I repaid my start-up loan. But I can never really repay my credit union for believing in me," Sisler said in an ad that appeared in Washington media.
On this page and the pages that follow are some of the marketing messages, the media appearances, the petition drives and more that were organized by credit unions in the months after that Supreme Court rulling 15 years ago.
